# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1858_S304
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

304     Lutheran-Theological Pastor's Library.

-posterity; and I pray to God that he himself may reward you for your godly care for the church, and fill you and your wife and your whole house with heavenly and temporal blessing." Calov writes, in his Paedia theologica, concerning Porta's Pastorale: "This excellent work every candidate of the holy ministry ought rightly to hold most highly recommended, for the sake of Luther's God-filled (entheum) spirit, by which it is animated." These testimonies, which could still be multiplied by a great number of equally laudatory ones, may suffice to entice every preacher who does not yet own this work to acquire it for himself and, as the old superintendent Freudemann of Querfurt admonishes, to occupy himself with it "nocturna atque diurna manu" [with nightly and daily hand]. The book has gone through several editions. The first appeared in 1582 at Eisleben, the second in 1586 in the same place, the third and fourth in 1597 and 1604 at Leipzig, all in quarto; the fifth at Jena in 1729, and the sixth at Nördlingen with Beck in 1842, the latter two in octavo. The second edition, which appeared after the author's death and was seen through the press by Mencelius, already has significant advantages over the first. For Porta, while still alive, had reviewed the book anew, corrected it with his own hand, and in part enlarged it with entirely new sections, and Mencelius made use of this for his edition. All subsequent editions are reprints of the second, except for the fifth, from the year 1729, which is the finest of them all. This one was prepared by M. J. Christoph Cramer, pastor at Ober- and Unter-Schmoon near Querfurt, a great-grandson of Porta's. Its merits consist partly in the correction of the various printing errors that had crept into the earlier editions, and partly in considerable additions of undisputed value. These additions consist, namely, in a still greater store of passages from Luther and from the other sources already used by the author, as well as from the writings of later theologians (for instance, from Mart. Chemnitz, Aeg. Hunnius, Sig. Saccus, Affelmann, Wolfg. Franz, Pet. Piscator, J. Gerhard, Balduin, Höpfner, Schilter, G. Albrecht, Dannhauer, Bidembach, J. Mair, Leyser, Herberger, Scriver, H. Müller, Glassius, J. Schmidt, Musäus, Geyer, Kromayer, and others), and finally in historical elucidations, particularly biographical notes. Cramer's additamenta [additions] are all placed beneath the text. A fine alphabetical index of names and subjects facilitates the use of the book. But since this edition appears to be hard to obtain, most of those who desire the book will have to content themselves with the new, otherwise excellently produced Nördlingen edition (600 pages in large octavo).

(To be continued.)