# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1855_S300
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

300 Lutheran Theological Pastor's Library.

[...to] know. It enjoys great renown. Its title is: Isagoge Locorum theol. Jenae 1658. — Among the editions of the Loci, four complete editions deserve particular mention. The first appeared in Jena in nine quarto volumes, issued at various times under the author's own supervision. The other was prepared by Reformed editors and appeared in Geneva, the first time in 1637, the fourth time in 1639 (the latter in an excellent format), in folio. The third edition we owe to the aforementioned Johann Ernst Gerhard; it appeared in Frankfurt and Hamburg in the year 1657, in three volumes in folio, and has the advantage over the earlier ones that it incorporates the notes which Johann Gerhard had written with his own hand in the margin of the first edition, since he intended to let the whole appear in an even more perfect form in due time. Since these additions are marked with asterisks, the complaint about their inclusion in the text, raised by the learned Copenhagen preacher Johann Brunsmann (died 1707), is certainly groundless, and it seems that he was led to this complaint solely by the fact that some such marginal notes were contrary to his non-Lutheran doctrine of the Sabbath. (Cf. Unschuld. Nachr., 1708, p. 304.) With more justice one may object to this edition that it is disfigured by a considerable number of sense-disturbing misprints, which, especially as regards the biblical citations, sometimes cause embarrassment. The fourth and last edition of the Loci the church owes to the diligence of the Tübingen theologian Cotta. It appeared in 1762 in 21 quarto volumes, of which the 21st contains an excellent general alphabetical index, although the alphabetical special indexes appended to the individual volumes in the other editions are far preferable to, and considerably more useful than, the "Conspectus" appended to the individual parts of Cotta's edition. We ourselves do not know the merits of this splendid edition from long use, since in our student days, in our poverty, we already had to count it a particular piece of good fortune, by taking a small sum of capital borrowed from a friend, to come at least into possession of the cheaper first edition, from which, like from an old, poor friend who had been so faithful to us in less smiling days, we have not since been able to part. A glance at Cotta's edition shows that Cotta has enriched Gerhard's work with a very considerable number of notes, partly further developing it dogmatically, partly linguistic, and especially notes on the history of doctrine, among which, so far as an incomplete use entitles us to judge, especially the latter seem to us to be of no small value. In any case the Tübingen edition surpasses all earlier ones in every respect, even though, as it seems to us, one might here and there wish to take issue with Cotta regarding his notes. If, finally, we are to state the merits of Gerhard's Loci in a few words, they are, in our humble judgment, chiefly the following. The argumentation