# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1857_S271
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lutheran-Theological Pastor's Library.   271

...man who is at home not only in the newer terminology, but also in the whole abstract manner of viewing things and their mutual relations that has now become current; indeed, in a language which imposes a hard labor of mind even upon one who is familiar with the way of thinking and speaking of the present-day learned world. We say nothing of the misunderstandings and uncertainties which such a form of presentation can easily produce in those who are not in a position to keep pace with the writer in the flight of his thoughts — and that in matters which concern the salvation and blessedness of souls. For the sake of such readers we here name a second work on moral theology as well. It is the following: "Dr. Johann Jacob Rambach's christliche Sittenlehre. Second and improved edition. Halberstadt and Leipzig 1788." The author was born at Halle in the Magdeburg territory in 1693, became in 1723 adjunct of the theological faculty and inspector at the Francke orphanage there, three years later ordinary professor of theology at the same place, and finally in 1731 professor primarius and first superintendent at Giessen, where he died already in the year 1735. Our Rambach does indeed belong to the Pietists, and none of his writings is wholly free of the pietistic leaven; yet he does not belong among the fanatical ones, such as, among others, a Joachim Lange was, still less to the class of those manifest enthusiasts who made it their business to snarl at all orthodox teachers who were zealous for the pure doctrine, and who knowingly departed from the doctrine of the churchly confession, as did a Gottfried Arnold and others. Johann Jacob Rambach was rather a soberly pious, godly theologian, devoted from the heart to the doctrinal system of our church except on a few points on which, without himself suspecting it, he slipped away — a man of no small learning and of a lively mind. His chief fault consisted without doubt in this, that he sought to win souls not so much with the courage of faith through the riches of the Gospel, as rather to rescue them by continual assaults upon carnal security and possible self-deception, while holding out the evangelical promises somewhat sparingly; and that in the matter of the so-called adiaphora he now and then did rather too much in his zeal against them, so that he did not always let full justice be done to the opponents of the Pietists, while on the other hand he allowed too great a leniency to prevail toward those who pressed vehemently for inward renewal (often without being rightly renewed themselves). Rambach's "Sittenlehre," although an opus posthumum, is among his best writings. After a general introduction, in which Rambach defines moral doctrine, sets forth what hinders and what furthers it, and gives the relevant literary history, the treatise proper follows in 12 chapters. First he treats of nature and grace in general; 2. of this distinction with respect to the understanding; 3. with respect to the conscience; 4. to the will; 5. to the memory; 6. to the imagination; 7. to the affections; 8. to the various temperaments; 9. of the weaknesses and temptations of the