Salig, Christian August

Salig, Christian August, a German theologian of great learning and mystical tendency, was born near Magdeburg, April 6, 1692. His father, a pastor, instructed him in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. In 1707 he bealan to study at Halle, and heard lectures from A.H. Franke, P. Anton, Christian Wolf, and others, also taking frequent part in public disputations against Socinianism and Romanism. From 1710 to 1712 he studied at Jena, under J.F. Buddaeus, J.A. Danz, and others, and took his master's degree. In 1714 he delivered lectures, philosophical, theological, and historical, at Halle. The same year he published Philosophumena Veterum et Recentiorum de Anima et ejus Immortalitate, at Halle, a work which drew to him the attention of Thomasius. In 1717 he became conrector of the school at Wolfenbuttel, and entered upon his duties with a dissertation, De Nexu Corruptionis ac Instaurationis Ecclesioe ac Scholarum. Here the excellent library furnished him welcome means of productive study. In 1723 he issued his work De Eutychianismo ante Eutychem, in which he treated also of the history of Nestorianism. For this work he was fiercely accused of Nestorianism himself. The second centenary of the Augsburg Confession occasioned the preparation of Salig's masterwork, a complete history of the Augsburg Confession and Apology (Halle, 1730). In 1733 he issued an additional work on the history of Protestantism outside of Lutheranism. In 1735 he published an account of the inner growth and strifes of Lutheranism, which was bitterly assailed because of its frank presentation of men and things as they actually were. As a continuation of his labors in the same field, he undertook a complete history of the Council of Trent, but did not live to finish it. He died at Wolfenbuittel in 1735. He wrote, also, Nodus

Proedestinationis Solutus. See Ballenstedt, De Vita et Obitu C.A. Saligii (Helmst. 1738); Herzog, Real-Encylk. 13, 323-325. (J.P.L.)