# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1856_S301
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lutheran-Theological Pastor's Library.                    301

They are not so much those of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
as rather, above all others, those of the sixteenth — our Martins. If,
however, for the sake of truth, we have believed it necessary to say this
— that we can no longer fully equate a Löscher with the older representatives
of Lutheran orthodoxy — we do not thereby wish in the least
to detract from his great services to our Church in an exceedingly
troubled time, nor from the high value of his theological writings; so
little indeed, that we would rather, moved to it by our own use of them,
unhesitatingly grant the first rank and award the prize, among all the
polemical writings that have appeared against the Reformed, to his
"Historia Motuum," written, among other things, in the German language.
The work falls into three parts, which appeared only gradually,
at longer intervals. The first part came out at Frankfurt and Leipzig in
1707, in quarto; it comprises no fewer than one alphabet and nineteen
sheets. The second part appeared at Leipzig in 1708, in quarto, and
comprises one alphabet and sixteen sheets. The third followed only in
the year 1724, at Frankfurt and Leipzig, in quarto, and comprises two
alphabets and two sheets. Two years earlier Löscher also published
(Leipzig, 1722, in quarto, comprising nine sheets) "Supplementa to the
detailed Historia Motuum," etc., which contain highly valuable supplements
to the first two parts. The best complete edition is probably the
one which, though we have never had occasion to see it ourselves, we
find announced in the following manner in the "Handbibliothek der
theologischen Literatur" of J. J. Palm (Erlangen, 1792): "V. E. Löscher's
detailed Hist., etc., 3 parts with appendix and J. Rud. Kiessling's continuation,
quarto, Leipzig and Schwabach, 1777." — What Cyprian's
"Convincing Instruction on the Origin and Growth of the Papacy" (cf.
the April issue of "Lehre und Wehre" of the current volume, p. 122 ff.)
is with regard to polemics against the Roman [Catholics], that is
Löscher's "Historia Motuum" with regard to polemics against the Reformed.
This latter work, too, carries out its counter-proof by the historical
route. The occasion was the following. When King Frederick I of
Prussia made the well-known attempts to bring about a union between
the Lutherans and the Reformed, and, as a result, many writings appeared
advocating this union in a most indifferentist spirit, Löscher
wrote his "Most Humble Address to a Most Mighty Sovereign, Concerning
the Union of Religions" (comprising thirteen sheets); against this
the Reformed Dr. Johann Christian Beckmann published a so-called
"Exceptionsschrift" [rejoinder], which Löscher refuted in his "History
of the First Religious Motus between the Evangelicals and the Reformed"
(Leipzig, 1704), in which he showed, from the history of the movements
arising out of Zwinglianism and Calvinism from the year 1524 to 1605,
the incorrectness of Beckmann's assertion that the Lutheran theologians
alone bore the blame for all the bitterness that had arisen. When
Beckmann came forward again in opposition, Löscher resolved, in