Sermons in general reveal the widespread and multifarious use of the vocabulary of disease that was usually linked with biblical verses of specific medical character.
On each page four biblical texts and four commentaries were placed either side of eight richly illustrated pictures in medallions.
When he has nothing more exciting to write about than his own health, he spices the letters up with biblical jocularities.
The first encounter with biblical evidence foreshadows much of what follows.
The biblical orientation is, of course, prominent, but in addition he combines it with logic and metaphysics.
From this perspective the biblical passages are appropriated and musically framed to express the human psychology of loss, grief, commemoration and consolation.
Where scientific theories ran into troubles, where they became contradictory or aporetic, the biblical account provided guidance.
Applying a new historical criticism, he showed that biblical teaching and law were irrelevant for a modern pluralistic state and its intellectual life.
