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RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Stoddard
Stoicism
in the following year. He was made superintend- I ant at Heldburg, and in 1558 took part, with Mor- ' lin and Simon Musaeus; in the preparation of the Weimar " Book of Confutation," which they defended against Victorinua Strigel and Pastor Hiigel in a special Apologia in'1559. The next year Stossel and Morlin accompanied John Frederick to Heidelberg, in the hope of keeping the duke's father-in-law, Elector Frederick the Pious, firm in Lutheranism. This proved impossible, however, and shortly after Stossel's return a change became apparent in his own attitude. In ensuing controversies between Lutheran and Calvinistic theologians both he and Morlin assumed an intermediate position, and in this frame of mind became councilors of John Frederick, though at the Natlmburg Diet of princes in 1561 they still worked on the side of Flacius. But when Stossel was appointed, first temporarily and then (Sept., 1561) definitely, superintendent in Jena, his mediating position became more pronounced, and with his limitation of the theological controversy of the Jena professors and the elevation of the Weimar consistory, at his instance, to the supreme church authority in Thuringia, with himself as its assessor, the breach between him and the Flacian party became complete, so that when Flacius and Wigand protested in writing against him, he lodged complaint against them at court.
The result of this controversy was the deposition of both his opponents and the rout of their whole party, while Stossel was appointed to a theological professorship and undertook the difficult task of mediating between the Flacian clergy and the synergistic Strigel. But his Superdeclaratio, composed to this end, caused fresh dissension and the dismissal of some forty recalcitrant pastors in 15621563, as well as a bitter literary controversy. Strigel, suspicious of Stossel, resigned from the faculty, and for a time Stossel was the sole theological professor at Jena, of which he was rector in 1563, 1565, and 1567. After the fall of John Frederick, his brother and successor, John William, recalled the exiled pastors in 1567, and they issued, against Stossel's Superdeclaratio, their own Responsio exulum Phuringicorum, compelling all who had subscribed to his work to resign. Through the influence of the Elector August he was appointed superintendent in Muhlhausen, whence he was transferred to Pima, becoming ecclesiastical councilor and confessor to the elector. In May, 1570, at the colloquy of Zerbst, he sought recognition for the Corpus doctrines Philippicum. But his plea for the crypto-Calvinism of the Philippists doomed him, and in March he was confined to his house in Pima, where he signed a declaration submitted to him by the elector. At the Diet of Torgau, however, his disrespectful utterances about high personages were brought to formal notice, in August he was removed to the fortress of Senftenberg, and in Jan., 1576, again underwent a formal trial.
StSssel's revulsion from the Flacians of Jena receives its explanation from their terrorism, but his change to crypto-Calvinism is more difficult to account for. Many of his contemporaries ascribed it to unworthy motives; and it is impossible to tell
how far personal ambition was the cause, or how far the reason lies simply in the development of his views of theology and of the Church.
vole. i.-ii., Marburg, 1852-63; A. Kluckhohn, Friedrich der Fromme, pp. 69 sqq., Nordlingen, 1879; R. Hofmann, Geschichte der Kirche St. Marian in Pirna, pp. 38 sqq., Pirna, 1890; ADP, xxxvi. 471 eqq.
STOICISM: One of the philosophic-ethical schools of ancient Greece and. Rome. The founder of Stoicism was Zeno of Citium in Cyprus (d. in Athens c. 260 B.C.), originally a trader, who in middle life determined to reside permanently in Athens. Here, in the Stod poikile, the colonnade adorned with frescoes of. patriotic themes of Attic legends and history, he was wont to meet his followers, hence the name. The formal resolutions of the Attic government in his honor seem to attest the substantial consistency of his conduct and of his doctrine. Neither his direct successors, Cleanthes of Aasos (d. about 220 s.c.), and Chrysippus the Cilician (d. about 207 s.c.), nor Panwtius (d. 112 s.c.) aid Posidonius (d. about 50 s.c.) can be here discussed. What is of interest is the attitude of the school toward religion and ethics.
Formally the Stoics were materialists. Even deity, divinity, God, was to them a substance, ether, the most delicate and all-pervasive element. In the periodic processes of -cosmic making and unmaking, whether through fire or deluge, this alone ij imperishable and eternal. Of this substance are the individual souls of men, but they are not immortal. "God, " "universe, " " the world, " " fate ," " providence ," " Zeus," all these as well as " reason " are merely terms and names for one and the same thing (Diogenes Laertius, vii. 135). God is immanent in the world, dissolving it in cosmic periods into himself and creating it again out of himself. Intelligence and providence. pervade and permeate the world. Past and future are infinite eternities, the present only is limited. Toward the physical personificatiows of the so-called religion of the Greeks, this school assumed an attitude which, when superficially considered, appeared to be conservative, but it was in effect destructive. They resorted to allegories and allegorical interpretation. This matter and method found its way into the schools of those who expounded Homer and Hesiod, and was reasserted later on by Curnutus in Rome, a contemporary of Claudius and Nero, as well as by N eoplatonists like Porphyry and Servius. How practise of sincere worship could abide with this allegorical dissolution of Hera, Athena, Zeus, and the rest it is hard to see; at the same time the scandalous elements of Homeric anthropomorphism were abolished, names, legends, and symbols being ,preserved.
The relation of man to tdmself, to God or the world, and to his fellow men, is best expressed in the axiomatic postulate that ` man must live in consonance with nature "; here they differed profoundly from their chief adversaries, the Epicureans, as well as from the Greek contentment with mere physical felicity. They claimed that " nature," " God," 11 reason," direct man to seek the highest good in
