# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1855_S341
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lutheran-Theological Pastor's Library. 341

confessions agree with it, will see in that formula of subscription the sense which the Wittenberg Synod found in it, but they will have to recognize that this sense can be found in it, and this recognition alone will already call forth a protest such as becomes Protestants.

Do not overlook, finally, that despite all the talk that church confessions and subscription to them are unnecessary, experience nonetheless forces itself upon us and the recognition breaks through that a firm, strong church order cannot be built up nor stand without a definite confession. This experience has led both to the drawing up of the mutilated Augsburg Confession itself and to the resolution of the Wittenberg Synod, and it will compel all ministers of the General Synod who mean sincerely by the Lutheran church no longer to examine the confessions of the church through the spectacles of their professors, who are stuck fast in the old rut of Supranaturalist half-measures, but to test them with their own eyes. They will find that whoever truly confesses himself with the Augsburg Confession and the writings of the Book of Concord renounces everything papistic in essence and thought, and surrenders himself without reservation, without clause or scruple, into obedience to the Word of God. But that is the one thing needful. —

Lutheran-Theological Pastor's Library.

(Continued.)

b. Next to a comprehensive dogmatic work, a minister needs a short, well-arranged compendium of dogmatics. Among all works of this kind we know none better to recommend than the following: Jo. Guilielmi Baieri Compendium Theologiae positivae, adjectis notis amplioribus, etc. The author of this work, Johann Wilhelm Baier, was born at Nuremberg on November 11, 1647, as a posthumous child; he first taught publicly as professor at Jena, then in the year 1694 as such at the newly founded University of Halle, and after that, following a brief tenure as chief court preacher and general superintendent at Weimar, died on October 19, 1695. Closely related to the great Jena theologian Johannes Musäus (he was his son-in-law), he followed altogether in the latter's footsteps, especially as regards the excellent qualities of Musäus's theology. The merits by which the compendium here noted distinguishes itself above all others of this kind are, first, great completeness combined with compressed brevity, the exclusion of all extraneous matter, an excellent selection and exceedingly accurate exposition of the scriptural proof-texts, a critical comparison and use of the works of his predecessors in the field of dogmatics, and, alongside Lutheran fidelity in doctrine, an expression