# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1859_S213
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On Bible Sermons. 213

the underlined passages once more and completes them with references in
the margin to Dr. Luther's own writings, in order to gain a clear view of
the scope and main content of what is to be given. Finally one works
through verse by verse, writes down the result as briefly and precisely as
possible, and impresses it fully upon the memory. The more faithfully one
holds to one's model in doing so, and the less foreign matter one mixes
in, the better the work will turn out, and the sooner and more fully one
will learn from the greatest master of scriptural exposition the right way
of doing it, so that even with texts on which his writings offer little or no
material, one will find the aim and path of right exposition ever more
easily. The surest aid for this, to be sure, is an index of all the Bible
passages occurring in his works, for which I refer to the first number of
the Lutherophilus, p. 20f. Or one may at least note in the margin of one's
own Bible the passages in Dr. Luther's writings where an exposition is to
be found — excellent advice which Porta first gave in his Pastorale
Lutheri, chapter V, § 9, beginning with the words: "Finally I admonish all
faithful teachers, etc."

In choosing commentaries for such books for which no, or no complete,
expositions are to be found in Dr. Luther, one should proceed so as to
prefer the earlier ones from the age of the Reformation to the later, the
practical to the learned, those which combine understanding and
application to those which separate the two, and the shorter to the more
extensive. Of the expositors of Scripture in Dr. Luther's own time I will
name only three, whom I would compare to the three heroes of David:
these are Brentius, Bugenhagen, and Weller. The first expounded most of
the books of Holy Scripture in the Latin language, and for the most part
at considerable length; the second is especially distinguished by his
exposition of the Psalter, the first work of its kind from that period,
which has also been translated into German and to which a still fuller
supplement was later added. He also treated other books, e.g. the
prophet Jeremiah very fully, but the smaller epistles of Paul only
summarily, all in the Latin language. Weller's expositions are especially
rich in applying the text to all manner of comfort, and are marked by a
pithy brevity. In German we have from him only the first half of the
book of Job and a large number of Psalms; in Latin, besides many
Psalms, several historical books of the Old Testament, as well as some of
the smaller epistles of Paul.

Among later teachers up to the beginning of the seventeenth century I
name, besides the preachers mentioned above, Mathesius, Cyriacus
Spangenberg and Selnecker, also these three: Chytraeus, Aegidius
Hunnius, and Balduin. From the first we have complete commentaries on
Genesis through the book of Ruth, further on the Gospels of Matthew and
John, and finally on the Revelation of John, the latter also available in
German translation. Aegidius Hunnius likewise treated the last-named
books, and besides these all the epistles of Paul except the two to
Timothy, in Lat-