"You Have the Pound": Exhortation to Read the Holy Scriptures and Other Prefaces, Discourses, and Correspondence from 1524

With his Sermons on the First Epistle of John freshly delivered in December 1523 and soon to undergo editing for publication, Oecolampadius' second year in Basel (1524) begins with his participation in a disputation on the marriage of priests and a sermon on the miracle at wedding in Cana (though the year and the source of this sermon are somewhat uncertain); also in the first quarter of the year, one of his most popular and widely used works emerges, his translation of Theophylact's commentary on the Gospels, the preface to which is included here. By August, with his famous Isaiah lectures concluded and a new series on Romans commencing, a second important foreword accompanies Johannes Bebel's economical Greek New Testament, an "Exhortation to the Read the Holy Scriptures," in which the Reformer informs the reader: "See, you have the pound" ⏤ by which he means, the Word itself is the parable's first pound or talent, with which the servant of the Word is to either trade and double his holdings or face the consequences of burying what has been entrusted.