Methodus Sacrae Scripturae in publicis tum praelectionibus tum concionibus utiliter atque intelligenter tractandae

...Andreas Hyperius. Therefore, receive in few words by what reason I think this Sacred Scripture, which teaches these things, should be handed down in public and private lectures, about to hear something later concerning the method of preaching.

A decorative drop cap letter C

SINCE the empty sound of words and vain declamation should be avoided in the solid explanation of any argument, and most especially in the explanation of Sacred Scripture, which, as it has the divine word for its subject, must contain nothing but what is sound and useful. From which it happens that that Laconian brevity fittingly becomes Christian theologians; but because it also almost happens, as Horace Flaccus says,

I struggle to be brief, I become obscure,

care must be taken lest that brevity give birth to any obscurity, or lest the effort to avoid that obscurity bring about a tedious prolixity. That, however, will be done most easily if the continuation of the argument which you have undertaken to treat is made aptly with the preceding part; then, if the summary of the entire future dispute is proposed, which you either explain entirely without any distribution, because perhaps it cannot be divided, or later you divide into its members and, as it were, chapters. Finally, if the argument itself which occurs, either as a whole or through its parts one by one, as much as the verse...