Arndt

Johann Arndt (1555–1621).
Des Gottseeligen und Hoch-erleuchteten Lehrers, Paradiess-Gärtlein.
Augsburg: Heirs of Johann Jacob Lotter, 1746. (BRF0003/A)

Lutheran mystic theologian Johann Arndt has been called the “Prophet of Interior Protestantism.” His best-known devotional work, Wahren Christentums (“True Christianity”), published between 1605 and 1609 in four volumes, was widely influential among both Protestants and Catholics. Arndt’s popular “Garden of Paradise,” first published in 1612, is a prayer manual guiding the reader from spiritual rebirth to complete union with the Divine. This 1746 printing is bound with “Spiritual Treasure Box for the Christian Communicant,” a work by Austrian court composer Johann Christoph Beer (1655–1700), an apologist for Protestant Orthodoxy.