# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1858_S303
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lutheran-Theological Pastor's Library.     303

-ters in general, 13. of baptism, 14. of matters of confession and of the ban, 15. of administering the sacrament, 16. of care for the poor, 17. of the melancholic, the afflicted, and the possessed, and how to deal with them, 18. of visiting and comforting the sick and evildoers who have forfeited their lives, 19. of burial, 20. of the support and salary of preachers, 21. of the resistance and cross of upright preachers, 22. of the comfort and reward of faithful preachers, 23. of unfaithful preachers, sectarian spirits, and enthusiasts, their nature and character, 24. of the punishment and downfall of unfaithful and false teachers, heretics, and sectarian spirits. These chapters comprise, in our edition, 1,039 pages, the appendix 173. No other book of like tendency can be set alongside the "Pastorale Lutheri." Whoever has not read this book cannot say that he has read a true Lutheran pastoral theology. The core of what, in Luther's written literary remains, gives instruction for the right conduct of the holy preaching office in every respect is presented here in excellent order and in Luther's own words, with an indication of the place where the citation is to be found. To be sure, Porta himself also added no small amount of his own, but these too are all fruits of the school of Luther, in which Porta was so faithful a disciple. Besides this, precious golden grains are also to be found in the work drawn from the church fathers, from Brenz, Melanchthon, Weller, Amsdorf, V. Dietrich, Huberinus, Regius, Heshusius, Luc. Osiander, Erasm. Sarcerius, Mörlin, Mich. Neander, from the church orders, and finally important responsa of theological faculties. Our "Pastorale" has therefore also been received in the Lutheran church with just as great joy as it has been continually held in the highest esteem and praised and urgently recommended by the most eminent theologians. Porta himself says in the preface that he did not rush with the work, but rather "kept it in hand for some years, and before that sought the judicia et censuras [judgments and opinions] of many long-practiced and well-deserving theologians at academies and eminent churches, who both in writing and by word of mouth advised that this work should, the sooner the better, be communicated to simple, pious servants of the Word through open publication." When the famous lover of Luther, Mich. Neander, Abbot at Ilefeld, first got it into his hands, he wrote (in October 1582) to the author: "Your altogether excellent theological work has been most pleasing to me; men who are zealous for the godliness and welfare of the church rightly hold, and pass the judgment, that nothing similar has come to light since the time that the ancients on the one hand, and the moderns on the other, have attempted to write anything of this kind for the church. Here the Roman and the Greek writers must yield. No one can see it without admiring it, esteeming it worthy, acquiring it for himself, and giving it the foremost place in the library of the great Luther, and without offering you, for so useful and so necessary a labor, the highest, indeed an immortal, thanks — which I hereby do, not so much in my own name as in the name of the church and of the whole