Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism
The lectures of Zacharias Ursinus on the Heidelberg Catechism, written up from students’ notes and edited by his pupil David Pareus. They explain the catechism question by question in the words of the man held to be its chief author.
Ursinus taught theology at Heidelberg in the years when the catechism was made and introduced. These lectures go through it in order, giving for each question the text, an exposition under numbered heads, and answers to objections. They were not published by Ursinus himself. According to the introduction printed with the translation, students’ notes of the lectures appeared in print soon after his death, and his pupil David Pareus then revised the whole; that revision was first printed at Heidelberg in 1591 and is the text translated here.
The work shows how the catechism was understood and taught in the school from which it came. On the first question Ursinus says that the question of comfort is placed first because it contains the design and substance of the whole catechism. Because the text passed through the hands of students and an editor, it cannot be taken as Ursinus’s exact words throughout.
Cited in
- 19 January 1563, firm date