# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1857_S309
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lutheran-Theological Pastor's Library.   309

...a Lutheran pastor has, however, the need to learn still more about one epoch in particular than all those works give which describe church history in general, namely about the epoch of the Reformation. And on this we do indeed have a work which fully answers that need. It is the following: "Viti Ludovici a Seckendorf Commentarius historicus et apologeticus de Lutheranismo sive de Reformatione." The author, Veit Ludwig von Seckendorf, born at Herzogenaurach near Erlangen in the year 1626, was indeed no theologian by his outward calling, but a jurist, in which capacity he held the most important offices of state and was for a considerable time, so to speak, the right hand of Duke Ernst the Pious of Saxe-Gotha in his administration of the state and in the drafting and execution of the wholesome plans of reform of that godly and wise prince in state and church; nevertheless Seckendorf was, in respect of his inner calling, his learning, his experience and his enlightenment, truly a theologian who scarcely stood behind any theologian by profession of his time. His erudition in the most varied branches of human knowledge — apart from jurisprudence and divinity, especially in history, in the science of states, in mathematics and in philology — was eminent. Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, Danish and Swedish he understood thoroughly. With all this, however, he was a true, zealous, humble, simple Christian in the full sense of the word *). He has been called, we think not unjustly, "omnium Nobilium christianissimus et omnium Christianorum nobilissimus." In the year 1682 he withdrew to his estate Meuselwitz near Altenburg from all his public offices, in order here especially to give himself to the composition of theological writings and to godly meditation. In the year 1691, however, he had to come out into public life once more. Elector Friedrich III of Brandenburg called him to be his privy councillor and shortly thereafter made him chancellor of the newly founded University of Halle, where, however, he already on the 18th of December 1692 fell gently and blessedly asleep. The most important fruit of his years of retirement is his "Commentarius de Lutheranismo." For the working out of it the richest and rarest sources stood at his command. From the archives at Weimar, Dresden, Gotha, Eisenach and Brunswick he received such a store of authentic documents that he needed two spacious rooms to house them. He used everything faithfully and excerpted with unexampled diligence out of whole forests of folios everything himself, and also had the

*) To communicate only one trait from the life of Seckendorf as a Christian: Balth. Scharf relates that Seckendorf, "in princely affairs of the highest importance, which concerned whole lands and had been laid upon him, did not have such anxiety and fear as when he was to call a preacher to his estate Meuselwitz, so that he also spent the whole night beforehand in prayer and tears."