# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1857_S310
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

310   Lutheran-Theological Pastor's Library.

...copied out by another hand what he did not indeed wish to take up into his work, but wanted to have at hand as documentation for cases that might arise. The beginning of the Commentarius appeared in 1688 in quarto at Frankfurt and Leipzig; a supplement, which appeared in 1689 in duodecimo at Leipzig, completed the work. Complete and enlarged, it came out for the first time in the same place in 1692 in folio. An "Editio secunda emendatior" (which adorns our own private library) followed in the same format in the year 1694. The first occasion for writing this work, which also gave it its form, was the book of a Lorraine Jesuit which Seckendorf received from France in the year 1681, and of which he was assured that it was there held in very high esteem and was triumphantly held up before the Lutherans as an irrefutable counter-writing — namely the book: "L. Maimbourg Histoire du Lutheranisme" (published in a third edition at Paris 1687, 2 vols. in duodecimo). The less there were found in this Jesuit writing the usual palpable Jesuit fables, and the more it sought to give itself the appearance of impartiality, the more dangerous did Seckendorf hold it to be, and he wished from his heart to see a thorough refutation of it. He himself, still burdened with many official duties, could not think of it. But after he had obtained a longer period of leisure from the following year onward, he resolved at last, mindful of an earlier encouragement of Duke Ernst, to try himself in the field of historical writing, and, after he had completed his "Christenstaat," to write the refutation himself. The plan of the work is the following. The complete text of Maimbourg's history of Lutheranism in Latin translation is always printed above, section by section, across the whole page, whereupon after each single section there follows at once Seckendorf's correction and further exposition of the history in two parallel columns, so that the writing and the counter-writing stand out most clearly. The whole comprises the history of the Reformation from 1517 to 1546; counting the indices, about 1000 folio pages in very compressed and yet handsome print. The continuous indication of the year on every page and the marginal summaries for each paragraph make the use of the work uncommonly easy. No other history of the Reformation equals this one in richness of the facts narrated and the citations communicated, in thoroughness and exactness of statement, in correctness of selection, in soundness of judgment, in the excellence of the apologetic procedure observed in it. No pastor of the Lutheran church ought to be without this work. For those whose means are not so limited, we note further that a work has appeared whose chief purpose is to supplement Seckendorf's Commentarius. It is the following: "Wilhelm Ernst Tenzel's historical report on the beginning and first progress of the Reformation of Luther, together with a preface, communicated with documents never yet published, by Dr. E. S.