# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1857_S370
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

370 The Lutheran-Theological Pastor's Library.

writings, treat of their fortunes, principal editions, authenticity, integrity, and the like (in 80 pages in large octavo). Thereupon follows the text, on the one page the Greek original, where and so far as it is extant, on the other page the Latin translation. The order is as follows: 1. the Epistle of Barnabas; 2. the two epistles of Clemens Romanus; 3. the seven epistles of Ignatius (the shorter recension); 4. the Acts of the Ignatian martyrdom; 5. the Epistle of Polycarp; 6. the letter of the congregation of Smyrna on Polycarp's martyr death; 7. the Epistle to Diognetus; 8. the Shepherd of Hermas. One may well be content with the inclusion of numbers 4, 6, 8, and of the beautiful writing under No. 7, whose place here is very problematic. Beneath the text there run continuous critical, historical, and otherwise explanatory notes, mostly very welcome, in which are also found the references to the Bible passages which are cited in the text or to which the text even merely seems to allude. The whole is closed by a very serviceable index of passages and a subject as well as a personal index. The summaries set over the chapters likewise increase the usefulness of the work. The third edition, on the basis of which we render our report, is „aucta et emendata“. — Among German translations of the writings of the apostolic fathers we know and possess only a very defective one, which is found as an appendix in the Wandsbeck New Testament of 1710 in quarto (which contains in 5 columns on every page: the Catholic German translation of Ulenberg, the Lutheran, the Reformed of Piscator, that of Heinrich Reiz, and finally the Dutch translation prepared by six Reformed theologians on the recommendation of the Synod of Dort and first published at Leyden in 1636.) The epistles of the apostolic fathers are here added as „Novi Testamenti Apocrypha“, and indeed, besides those cited above under Nos. 1—6, four more of those falsely ascribed to Ignatius, together with the so-called Epistle of Paul to the Laodiceans.

Useful as it might further in any case be for a Lutheran pastor to have and to read the next following oldest writings, those of a Justin Martyr, of a Cyprian (whom Luther calls a „weak theologian“, but also an „excellent man and dear martyr“, „who stumbles in coarse pieces“), and of a Tertullian (whom Luther, to be sure, for all the other praise he grants him, calls „a regular Carlstadt“) — still, under present circumstances most Lutheran pastors must in any case content themselves with procuring only a few more of the most indispensable complete patristic writings. Among these, however, we reckon above all several writings of Augustine. Of him Luther writes in a preface to a new edition of Augustine's book „De spiritu et littera“ of 1518: „Since it does not lie within everyone's means to procure for himself all the works of Augustine, it has been thought necessary, for the benefit of those who have not much means, to let one and another little book of Augustine go forth in print: so that everyone may see