About the Author

Philip Schaff (1819-1893), American theologian and church historian, was born in Chur, Switzerland, on the first of January, 1819. He was educated at the gymnasium of Stuttgart and at the universities of Tuebingen, Halle, and Berlin, where he was successively influenced by Baur, Tholuck, and Neander. In 1843 he became professor of church history and biblical literature at the German Reformed Theological Seminary of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. His inaugural address, The Principle of Protestantism, delivered in German in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1844, and published in German with an English version by J. W. Nevin, was a pioneer work in the field of symbolics.