Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

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4) of baptism and the Lord’s Supper;
5) of the other so-called Sacraments;
6) of Christian liberty, Church government, and discipline.
The second edition has seventeen, the third, twenty-one chapters. In the
author’s last edition of 1559, it grew to four or five times its original size,
and was divided into four books, each book into a number of chapters
(from seventeen to twenty-five), and each chapter into sections. It follows
in the main, like every good catechism, the order of the Apostles’ Creed,
which is the order of God’s revelation as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The
first book discusses the knowledge of God the Creator (theology proper);
the second, the knowledge of God the Redeemer (Christology); the third,
of the Holy Spirit and the application of the saving work of Christ
(soteriology); the fourth, the means of grace, namely, the Church and the
sacraments. f460
Although the work has been vastly improved under the revising hand of the
author, in size and fulness of statement, the first edition contains all the
essential features of his system. “Ex ungue leonem.” His doctrine of
predestination, however, is stated in a more simple and less objectionable
form. He dwells on the bright and comforting side of that doctrine, namely,
the eternal election by the free grace of God in Christ, and leaves out the
dark mystery of reprobation and preterition. f461 He gives the light without
the shade, the truth without the error. He avoids the paradoxes of Luther
and Zwingli, and keeps within the limits of a wise moderation. The fuller
logical development of his views on predestination and on the Church,
dates from his sojourn in Strassburg, where he wrote the second edition of
the Institutes, and his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans.
The following sections on some of his leading doctrines from the last
edition give a fair idea of the spirit and method of the work:
THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
AND THE KNOWLEDGE OF OURSELVES.
(Book I. ch. 1, §§ 1, 2.)
1. “True and substantial wisdom principally consists of two parts, the
knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. But while these two
branches of knowledge are so intimately connected, which of them