FORM OF CONCORD. PART II. A FULL DECLARATION; OR A RADICAL, CLEAR, CORRECT, AND FINAL REPETITION AND EXPOSITION OF SOME With the gracious permission of the Elector of Saxony.-Dresden 1582. PREFACE. By the inestimable goodness and mercy of God, the doctrine concerning the principal articles of our Christian religion, which had been deeply obscured during the papacy by the opinions and traditions of men, has now again been clearly unfolded and purified, according to the instruction and analogy of the word of God, by the labors of the illustrious doctor Luther, while the errors, the abuses, and the idolatry of the priesthood have been abundantly exposed. By this pious reformation our adversaries suppose that new opinions have been introduced into the church; and as if this exposition were repugnant to the word of God, and entirely subversive of all pious. institutions, they have attacked it with violence and falsehood, and opposed it with endless reproaches, without the least color of probability. Our excellent electors, princes, and estates, illustrious for their piety and virtue, who had embraced the pure doctrine of the Gospel, and had reformed their own churches according to the rule of the word of God, being influenced by this consideration at the celebrated Diet of Augsburg, A. D. 1530, carefully provided that a pious Confession, collected from the Holy Scriptures, should be drawn up in writing; and they exhibited that confession to the Emperor Charles V. In this they distinctly and unreservedly confessed what was believed and publicly taught in the evangelical and reformed churches concerning the principal articles; especially concerning those articles which had become subjects of dispute between themselves and the pope's adherents. Our adversaries beheld this Confession with great concern, indeed, but to this day they have been utterly unable to refute or to overthrow it. Embracing with our whole heart this pious Augsburg Confession, constructed from the fundamental truths of the word of God, we publicly and solemnly profess it; and we shall retain that simple, pure, and perspicuous sense which its own expressions exhibit. We conceive it to be the pious symbol of our day, which devout minds ought to adopt next to the invincible authority of the word of God. In the same manner violent controversies formerly arose in the church of God, and confessions and pious symbols were written, which sincere teachers and hearers embraced with their whole soul, and publicly professed. And indeed, assisted by the grace of Almighty God, we shall persevere to the latest breath in the doctrine of this pious Confession, as it was exhibited to the Emperor Charles V., A. D. 1530. Nor have we the least idea, of departing the breadth of a finger nail, as they say, from this Confession, or of framing a different or a new Confession. And though the pious doctrine of this Confession has met no opposition, except those parts which came in conflict with the pope's adherents, it must be confessed that some theologians, in several articles of great importance, have departed from it, and either have not followed its true sense, or have certainly failed to adhere to it uniformly; while some also have endeavored to frame a different sense, pretending however that they have embraced the Augsburg Confession, and seeking a subterfuge under it, as if they gloried in its profession. But from this circumstance violent and pernicious controversies have arisen in the reformed churches; as formerly in the times of the Apostles, dreadful errors prevailed among those who desired to be esteemed Christians and who gloried in the doctrine of Christ. For they sought justification and salvation from the works of the law, Acts 15, 1-29; some denied the resurrection from the dead, others did not believe that Christ is the true and eternal God. These men the Apostles zealously opposed by their reasonings and their writings: for they were not ignorant that errors on subjects of so much importance, controversies so bitter, caused great offence among infidels as well as among those who were weak in the faith; just as our adversaries now exult on account of the dissensions which have arisen among us, cherishing a hope-by no means pious, indeed a false hope, that the utter ruin and extinction of our doctrine must follow from our mutual controversies. In the mean time the weak are exceedingly offended and alarmed; some doubt whether, in the midst of dissensions so numerous and violent, the true doctrine can be found among us; some cannot see to which party they ought to subscribe in these controverted articles. For these controversies are not verbal broils, or empty and unnecessary disquisitions about words, as often do arise, when one party has not satisfactorily adopted the opinion of another, as perhaps on the subject of religion, the present difficulty may seem to some, who imagine that this dispute is only about certain little words which are certainly of no great importance. But these are subjects of the gravest importance, so very serious indeed, that the opinion of that party which departs from the truth, can by no means be tolerated in the church of Godnor even excused or defended. Wherefore necessity requires that these controverted articles be explained distinctly from the word of God, and from approved writings, by which all the pious and intelligent may determine whose opinion, in these controversies is conformable with the word of God, and the orthodox Augsburg Confession; and what opinion is opposed to these standard writings; that good and pious minds, to whom truth is dear, may avoid and escape the corruptions and errors which have arisen. OF THE COMPENDIOUS FORM, THE BASIS, LAW, AND RULE OF DOCTRINE, BY WHICH ALL OPINIONS MUST BE DECIDED ACCORDING TO THE ANALOGY OF GOD'S WORD, AND ALL RISING CONTROVERSIES DEFINED AND DETERMINED. To establish permanent and indissoluble harmony in the church of God, it is first of all necessary that a compendious formula and type, as it were, stand approved by unanimous consent, in which has been collected from the word of God, the general doctrine which the churches of the pure and reformed religion profess. In this matter indeed we follow the example of the primitive church, which always possessed certain fundamental symbols for this purpose. And since these compendious forms of doctrine ought to rely, not upon private, but upon public writings, which have been drawn up, approved, and adopted in the name of those churches which unanimously profess the pure doctrines of religion, so on our part we have declared, and do now declare, that we have no intention to write or to receive any new or peculiar confession of faith; but rather do we embrace those public and general writings, which always had been regarded as symbols and general confessions in all the churches of the Augsburg Confession, before dissensions arose among some professing those articles. And these writings have secured the public authority, whenever, with great uniformity, the pure doctrine of the word of God has been preserved and retained in all the articles, as doctor Luther exhibited them. 1. We receive and embrace, with the whole heart, the prophetic and apostolic books of the Old and New Testaments, as the pure, the transparent fountains of Israel; and we believe those Sacred Wri tings alone to be the sole and infallible rule to which all opinions ought to conform, and according to which we ought to judge all doctrines as well as their teachers. 2. And because the pure doctrine of Christ, in its genuine and original sense, was collected long ago from the Sacred Books, and digested into articles or very brief chapters, opposed to the corruptions of heretics, we embrace also those three catholic and general symbols of high authority, namely, the Apostolic, the Nicene, and the Athanasian symbols. We know these to be brief indeed, but pious and most excellent confessions of faith, impregnably founded upon the word of God, by which all heresies, that distract the churches of Christ in these days, may be clearly and successfully refuted.. 3. Again; since, in these latter days, Almighty God, in great mercy, by the faithful agency of that most pious and excellent man, doctor Luther, has again restored to light the purity of his word, from the dreadful and more than Cimmerian gloom in which it had been involved under the papacy; and since that pure doctrine, opposed not only to the papists, but also to the corruptions of other sects, has been digested from the word of God into the articles of the Augsburg Confession, we embrace also that original and unaltered Confession. And we do this, not because it was written by our theologians, but because it is drawn from the word of God, and entirely composed from the fundamental principles of the Sacred Volume, similarly to that comprised in the manuscript of 1530, and exhibited at Augsburg to the Emperor Charles V. by certain electors, princes, and estates, of the Roman empire, as a general confession of the reformed churches. For we regard this as the symbol of our day, by which our reformed churches are discriminated from the Roman and other condemned sects and rejected heresies. And indeed this was the practice formerly in the primitive church. Subsequent synods, pious bishops and learned teachers, always appealed to the Nicene Symbol, and publicly professed themselves subservient to it. 4. Afterwards it was also necessary to provide that a proper and an adequate opinion of the Augsburg Confession might be preserved, sustained, and fortified against the abuses of the pope's adherents; lest under the garb and patronage of the Augsburg Confession, condemned errors might gradually insinuate themselves into the church of God; and hence, after this Confession was exhibited, an Apology of great elegance was written and printed in 1531. That also, with unanimous consent, we approve and embrace, because in that work not only the Augsburg Confession is clearly elucidated, and vindicated from the aspersions of our adversaries, but it is also fortified by the clearest and most infallible evidences of Holy Writ. 5. Besides these, we embrace with the whole heart those Articles also, which were written, approved, and adopted at Smalcald, A. D. 1537, in a numerous assembly of theologians. And we know that these Articles, in their original form, were afterwards published in print, with the design that they might be publicly submitted, in a council held at Mantua, or somewhere else, in the name of the most illustrious electors, princes, and estates, of the Empire, as a fuller exhibition of the Augsburg Confession, in which by the grace of God, these men had determined to persevere with constancy. For in these articles, the doctrine of the Augsburg Confession is recapitulated, and in some places more fully sustained from the word of God; and besides, the causes are shown and serious reasons assigned, why we have seceded from priestly errors and idolatries, why in these matters, there can be no unanimity between the Roman pontiff and ourselves, and why we cannot, on these subjects, be reconciled to him. 6. Finally, as the subject of religion relates to the salvation of the people, to those who are called the laity, and as it is necessary to their salvation for them to have the power of distinguishing the pure doctrine from the false, we embrace also the Smaller and Larger Catechisms of doctor Luther:-we say we embrace them as they were written by him and inserted in his works. For all the churches of the Augsburg Confession, approve and adopt these Catechisms; and hence they have been diffused extensively in churches and schools, and also in private families. In these Catechisms the pious doctrine, derived from the word of God, has been comprised, and plainly delineated for the use of the laity, with great clearness and simplicity. These public writings have always been viewed by all pious men in the purer churches and schools, as a compendious outline or form of salutary doctrine, which doctor Luther has drawn from the Sacred Volume, against the papists and other sectarians, and which he has there declared and supported by invincible arguments. And we ap |