# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1856_S265
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lutheran-Theological Pastor's Library. 265

and that whoever now undertakes to solve the same task once more, undertakes to write an Ilias post Homerum. Perhaps it may not be superfluous also to hear the judgments of competent judges concerning the Confessio Catholica. We will therefore let a few of them follow here. Thus Michael Walther (died as general superintendent at Celle in 1662) writes to Sal. Glassius: "The Phosphorus of the Lutheran Church, the great Gerhard, recently wrote me an exceedingly delightful letter and sent me the second part of the second book of his Confessio Catholica, which begins with the locus on the Word of God. Immortal God! how this incomparable work, after I had cast but a fleeting glance into it, covered me with the blush of shame, when I perceived from it how neither I nor any other of my like is even able to conceive such a work — I will say nothing of being able to carry it, with such ease, with such great erudition, with such clarity as to method, with such thoroughness in argument and refutation, and, to say it all in one word, with such astonishing and unheard-of skill, to a conclusion in the treatment of every single point. I could indeed not refrain from crying out: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God and crucified for us! preserve this one pillar and crown of your house, and put it into her mind that she may one day undertake the same task also against the writings of the Calvinists, and satisfy, with all your blessedness, this heart, so sincere and here burdened with so much labor and toil." (Vita Gerhardi, by Fischer, p. 405, 406.) Nicolaus Hunnius (the well-known superintendent at Lübeck, died 1643) writes, among other things, the following to Gerhard himself, who had sent him the work: "With this one work alone you deserve — to say nothing here of the others, so worthy of praise — the eternal thanks of the church of believers, and in the life everlasting, God's rich reward." (Ibid.) The famous and godly Joh. Saubertus (died as preacher at St. Lorenz in Nuremberg in 1646) writes to Gerhard: "I am not able to express in words with what joy the excellent gift filled me which you sent me, the like of which no eye in the world had seen before. I could not even wait for the bookbinder's work, but as soon as I received it, my spirit was wonderfully refreshed by reading through every page. O immeasurable labor of your work! O rarest monument of unbelievable diligence! O incalculable benefit, lasting into all futurity! I therefore give you my greatest thanks for this kindness." (Ib.) Anton Reiser (the learned pastor at St. Jacob in Hamburg, died 1686) writes in his Templum honoris: "Johann Gerhard has, after the example of David, pierced through the enemies of the truth for the most part with their own sword, of which his Confessio — following upon the Loci, and rightly entitled Catholica — furnishes the proof; and since no writer of the Roman-papist party has thus far dared to mutter publicly against it, what else is this but a testimony