Heidelberg Catechism · Question 4
Explaining Part I: Man's misery
What does God’s law require of us?
Christ teaches us this in a summary in Matthew 22: You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.
Scripture proofs King James Version
- Deut. 6:5 And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
- Lev. 19:18 Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.
Edition & Source Public domain
- Source
- The Heidelberg Catechism
- Translation
- English translation as published by apuritansmind.com; Scripture proofs: King James Version
- Published
- First published 1563
- Copyright
- Public domain.
- License
- Public domain
- Attribution
- Public domain. Text transcribed from apuritansmind.com, which reformed.org's historic-documents index links to. Compared automatically with the PDF at heidelberg-catechism.com, which is the same translation family: 217 of 258 questions and answers matched. Of the 41 that did not, I checked 18 by hand: Q12, Q18, Q27, Q56 and Q61 differ in wording, and the others were page-layout noise in the PDF; the remaining 23 were not checked by hand. Not yet proofread against a printed edition. Part divisions are the standard ones (Q1–2 introduction; Q3–11 misery; Q12–85 deliverance; Q86–129 thankfulness). The question 23 creed text had verse-number markers removed. Scripture proof texts are the King James Version, from the public-domain Project Gutenberg edition, added with tools/add_kjv.py. A few references could not be matched to verses (whole-chapter references such as ‘Genesis 1 throughout’, and typing slips in the source) and are shown without text.
Please visit the original source for the full work.
Cite as The Heidelberg Catechism. First published 1563. https://www.apuritansmind.com/creeds-and-confessions/the-heidelberg-catechism-by-zacharias-ursinus/