# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1855_S299
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Lutheran Theological Pastor's Library. 299

[...] to be done. We take this occasion to express the wish that some member of our synod would undertake to present our church here with a detailed biography of Gerhard. Such a work would certainly be of great benefit to our church, its teachers, and congregations. — But it is now time that we turn back and return to our actual subject, the description of Gerhard's Loci theologici. Gerhard began this work already in the year 1610, when he was still, at 27 years of age, superintendent in Heldburg *). There he published the first four volumes (Tomi), but the last five in Jena, in quarto, where he completed the work on Dom. Rem. 1621; on which occasion he invited the academic senate to a banquet at his house. Gerhard, as is well known, follows in his Loci the synthetic method, proceeding from causes to effects, dividing the whole system of Christian doctrine into "Loci," or chief articles of the Christian faith. It was not Gerhard's original plan to produce so extensive a work as it later became. The first Loci — on Holy Scripture, on God, on the Holy Trinity, and on the person and office of Christ — accordingly fall short in fullness of treatment compared with those that follow. Gerhard therefore published a supplementary volume to the first four Loci, in which is also found an exceedingly valuable proemium "on the nature of theology." This supplementary work (which whoever owns the first edition of the Loci can scarcely do without) bears the title: Exegesis sive uberior explicatio articulorum de scriptura S., de Deo et de persona Christi in Tomo primo Locorum theol. concisius tractatorum. Jenae 1625. 4. Later Gerhard formed the plan of melting his Loci down into a more compendious work, and at the same time making up in it what still seemed to him lacking in the Loci and in the Exegesis just mentioned. Death prevented the completion of so desirable a work. Only the first part, which completes the first two volumes, appeared in 1634, in quarto, under the following title: Disputationes isagogicae. Gottfried Cundisius, professor of theology at Jena, who died in 1661, undertook to continue this work supplementing the Loci, but was able to supply only the supplements to the third volume, in two parts (Voluminibus). The title of the first is: Specimen Isagoges ad Locos theol. Gerhardi seu Decas prima disputatt. in Tomum III. de Lege et Evangelio. Jenae 1648. 4. Of the second: Decas altera etc. de justificatione. Ib. 1650. 4. Of these we know only brief citations. Cundisius stood in his time in the reputation of a faithful and keen-minded theologian. Gerhard's worthy son, Johann Ernst Gerhard, produced an abstract of his father's entire work in three quarto volumes, which we know only from brief use

*) Gerhard became superintendent there, and doctor of theology, already in the 24th year of his age.