Sechs Bücher vom wahren Christenthum. Paradies-Gärtlein

simplicity prevails here. Indeed, whoever considers what fierce contradictions were raised against this book, and how many have endeavored to make it suspicious and to advise against reading it: such a person must confess that the blessing which has flowed into so many thousands of souls from these books through constantly continued editions,

and which still flows forth unhindered, is no effect of human eloquence, art, or wisdom. Rather, it is an effect of the highest goodness, which decided to communicate so much good to the Evangelical Church through this chosen instrument.

The First Section concerning the Person of the Late Johann Arndt.

(*) It is commonly told that Jacob Arndt was the court preacher of this Prince; however, Becmann refutes this in the History of Anhalt, Volume 7, page 323.

§ 4.
The blessed instrument to whom the Evangelical Church owes this treasure, Johann Arndt, was born in Ballenstädt in the Principality of Anhalt on December 27, 1555, on the day of St. John the Evangelist. His father, Jacobus Arndt, was a preacher in Ballenstädt under Lord Wolfgang, Prince of Anhalt (*), who is said to have had such a love for the Word of God that he himself preached several times. Since Johann had enjoyed the care of his father for barely ten years (his father having dedicated him to study because of his capable intellect), he was placed in the state of an orphan in 1565 by his father's early death. This opened a door for him to experience the care of the heavenly Father all the more richly. The heavenly Father, through his heart-steering power, awakened good patrons for him. Through their assistance, he stayed for a time in the schools at Aschersleben, Halberstadt, and Magdeburg, where he was able to lay the foundation for higher sciences.

§ 5. When he attended the university in 1576, he came to love the study of medicine above others and applied great diligence to it, as was also the case with the late Dr. Johann Gerhard. But God, who had chosen him for something higher, allowed him to fall into a deadly illness. In this sickness, he inclined his heart to bind himself by a vow: that if God would make him healthy again, he would henceforth make theology and the investigation of Holy Scripture his primary work. He also faithfully fulfilled this vow. He stayed for some time in

Helmstedt, where he heard Heshusius Tilemann Heshusius, a prominent Lutheran theologian., and in Wittenberg. He stayed longest, however, in Strasbourg, where he heard Sturm Johannes Sturm, a renowned educator. and Pappus Johann Pappus, a Lutheran theologian., and in Basel, where he was an auditor of Sulcer Simon Sulcer. and Zwinger Theodor Zwinger, a physician and scholar.. He advanced so far that he held private lectures for other students on rhetoric, ethics, physics, and philology, and especially explained the Epistle to the Romans to them. While in Basel, where a Polish baron was placed under his supervision, he once fell into the Rhine and was in danger of his life. Through divine providence, he was rescued from death by his

subordinate, who jumped in after him. This served as a prelude to how God, in the future, when the waves of persecution broke over him, would always awaken people who would rescue his innocence and good name.

§ 6. After he was placed in charge of a school in his homeland in 1582, he was called in 1583, in the twenty-eighth year of his age, by Lord Joachim Ernst, Prince and Lord of Anhalt, to serve in the teaching office at Baderborn Paderborn. In that same year, he also married. But here he had to undergo his first persecution. For after he had purely proclaimed the Word of the Lord for seven years, people gradually began to abolish innocent church customs to pave the way for a greater change of religion that followed soon after. However, because he made it a matter of conscience not to consent on his part and refused to approve the vehement abolition of the Exorcismi exorcism ritual in baptism and of images, he was removed from his office in 1590.

§ 7. Since his homeland was no longer worthy of him and he saw himself deprived of his office, God sent him two Vocationes calls to ministry: one to Mansfeld and the other to Quedlinburg. He accepted the latter and served his Savior faithfully for nine years at St. Nicholas Church there,

(*) In Mr. Rethmeyer's Braunschweig Church History, Volume 4, page 317.

(**) This appears in the Arndtian Apologies, page 118.

preaching especially on the Psalms and on True Christianity. How much he endured here in these nine years; how he often became truly weary of preaching due to the coarse behavior of some listeners in the church; what faithfulness he showed to the poor during the time of the plague; how he improved the thoroughly ruined parish fields, house, and church; how he never missed a single day of preaching and was a burden to no one—all this can be seen from his own letter (*) to the then-Abbess of Quedlinburg, in which he requested an honorable dismissal to Braunschweig. In 1599, he received a regular call to Braunschweig to St. Martin's Church. Upon invitation, he preached a trial sermon there on April 12, with the promise to obediently follow the call extended to him. Although he initially drew upon himself the great displeasure of the Abbess and the authorities in Quedlinburg, as well as severe persecution, hatred, envy, and slanders—to the point that they threatened to lock the church against him if he wished to give his farewell sermon—the matter was finally mediated through divine providence so that he was allowed to go in peace. He received a beautiful testimony (**) of pure doctrine and blameless conduct from the ministry in Quedlinburg.

§ 8. In Braunschweig, he carried out his office with great diligence, which was also crowned by God with much blessing. But this very blessing, and the fact that he had more

love than others, awakened a secret envy among some of his colleagues. They attacked him with all kinds of accusations, as if he were not pure in doctrine, a full-