Historical-Political Dissertation on Coins, Both Functional and Commemorative

"He does not love the coin much, who loves God. The coin will be to you an instrument of pilgrimage, not an enticement of greed; which you may use for necessity, not which you may enjoy (immoderately and inordinately) for pleasure. You are making a journey, this life is a stable (or inn), use the coin as a traveler in a stable uses a table, a cup, a pitcher, a bed, intending to depart, not to remain." And therefore, just as money itself, so too the doctrine concerning money surely has its own not-to-be-despised uses, and those not only political, moral, historical, and other profane uses, but also sacred and Ecclesiastical ones. Indeed, what great care and solicitude is necessary in creating as well as preserving genuine coins in a Republic, and on the contrary in abominating false and adulterated ones, as every upright Politician and Jurist in their writings (e.g., the most pious Chancellor Mr. Reinkingk, Biblische Policey, Book 2, axiom 44), so too moral Theologians, and Homilists in particular, when delivering sermons to the people, inculcate the same frequently and severely as far as their domain is concerned, from the monuments of the Holy Scriptures (e.g., Ezekiel 45:9 ff., Amos 8:4 ff., etc.). And how useful, for example, is the comparison and estimation of ancient coins to the ratio of our own coins, which has been instituted in the Weimar Biblical Table, as well as by other learned men? Similarly, in other genres of discourse, most serious Theologians make it clear by their own examples that coins can sometimes be applied to sacred matters, and indeed, if this is done decently and moderately, not uselessly. The pious Theologian Mr. M. Joh. Matthesius, who deserves well of the Evangelical Church and is most expert in metallurgical matters (the title with which Mr. Wag. honors him, Ch. 10, De re mon. vet. Rom.), in his Sarepta, especially in the 14th sermon, applies the entire natural monetary system to the spiritual one, namely to the whole man, upon whom the most beautiful image of the Creator himself, consisting primarily in wisdom, holiness, and perfect justice, had been impressed, and to its restitution and renovation in