1),
which was followed by others, including an edition of Ecclesiasticus with a
Latin commentary. On the advance of the French army under Napoleon into
Prussia, he determined to leave Wittenberg and abandon his university
career. Through the good offices of Reinhard, he became pastor of
Schneeberg in Saxony (1807). In 1808 he was promoted to the office of
superintendent of the church of Annaberg, in which capacity he had to
decide, in accordance with the canon law of Saxony, many matters belonging
to the department of ecclesiastical law. But the climate did not agree with
him, and his official duties interfered with his theological studies. With
a view to a change he took the degree of doctor of theology in Wittenberg
in August 1812. In 1816 he was appointed general superintendent at Gotha,
where he remained until his death in 1848. This was the great period of his
literary activity.

In 1820 was published his treatise on the gospel of St John, entitled
_Probabilia de Evangelii el Epistolarum Joannis Apostoli indole et
origine_, which attracted much attention. In it he collected with great
fulness and discussed with marked moderation the arguments against
Johannine authorship. This called forth a number of replies. To the
astonishment of every one, Bretschneider announced in the preface to the
second edition of his _Dogmatik_ in 1822, that he had never doubted the
authenticity of the gospel, and had published his _Probabilia_ only to draw
attention to the subject, and to call forth a more complete defence of its
genuineness. Bretschneider remarks in his autobiography that the
publication of this work had the effect of preventing his appointment as
successor to Karl C. Tittmann in Dresden, the minister Detlev von Einsiedel
(1773-1861) denouncing him as the "slanderer of John" (_Johannisschaender_).
His greatest contribution to the science of exegesis was his _Lexicon
Manuale Graeco-Latinum in libros Novi Testamenti_ (1824, 3rd ed. 1840).
This work was valuable for the use which its author made of the Greek of
the Septuagint, of the Old and New Testament Apocrypha, of Josephus, and of
the apostolic fathers, in illustration of the language of the New
Testament. In 1826 he published _Apologie der neuern Theologie des
evangelischen Deutschlands_. Hugh James Rose had published in England
(1825) a volume of sermons on the rationalist movement (_The State of the
Protestant Religion in Germany_), in which he classed Bretschneider