# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 12 27_S66
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66

Pope and church police should relax, in order to restore the peace of the churches. It has also been commanded us to go through the articles of the Confession a little, and to hear who might be of another opinion in any article and reject something of it. And the princes have expressly assured us that they would abide by the Formula of Concord." Thereupon Melanchthon relates how Bucer, and especially Blaurer, whom they did not wholly trust, particularly in the article of the Holy Supper, were rather sharply taken to task before they were admitted to the subscription of the Augsburg Confession, its Apology, and the Smalcald Articles and their Appendices. (Luthers Werke, loc. cit., p. 2460.)

From these reports of the eye- and ear-witnesses it appears irrefutably, first, this: that the princes did not order the joint re-reading and subscribing of the Confession and Apology on the part of their theologians in order that these Confessions should be examined once more, but in order that the theologians, especially those who had joined later, should be examined whether they stood on the ground of the same in unity of faith; because the honest Electors were far from wishing to ally themselves with heretics against the common enemy, the Pope, which carnal maxim now so often seeks to assert itself.

What the princes further understood by the things in which one might and would yield somewhat for the sake of the common peace, is plainly to be seen from the above passage in Melanchthon's letter to Camerarius. They did not mean by it any one of the articles of doctrine which they had confessed at Augsburg with the declaration that they would "rather kneel down here before His Imperial Majesty and have their heads cut off, than deny God and His Gospel," as Margrave George of Brandenburg, among others, expressed himself; they meant by it rather adiaphora, things indifferent, in which one might yield somewhat out of love for the unity of the Church, to which belonged especially the papal-episcopal jurisdiction, ordination, etc., ceremonies, the use of the church goods and the like. How far the Elector was from the thought of any necessary alterations of the Augsburg Confession, when he demanded of the theologians assembled at Smalcald a renewed review of it and a comparison upon it, we see from the letter of reply which this dear Prince sent to Luther as early as the 7th of January, after Luther had sent him the Smalcald Articles already drawn up. In it, as Junius cites in his History of the Reformation, it says: "He (the Elector) had read the articles through twice, and found himself persuaded, though he was a layman, that they were founded in the truth, and agreed fully with the Augsburg Confession; he would therefore also confess them at all times, wherever necessity should require, be it before a council, or before the whole world." (III, 291.) The very agreement of the Smalcald Articles with the Augsburg Confession made the Elector so confident and joyful to stand for them also as his confession. Remarkable in this connection is also the following. When Luther fell ill at Smalcald, and so gravely that he despaired of his life, all the princely persons present at the convention in Smalcald visited him. What Luther then said to the Elector in the face of death is found in a protocol which the renowned historian Baron von Seckendorf discovered in the princely archive at Weimar. It says there: "Luther said that after his death a dissension would arise at the University of Wittenberg and his doctrine would be changed. This awakened anxious thoughts in the pious Lord, which he, soon after, when Luther had recovered again, and he (the Elector) came to Wittenberg on the 5th of May, disclosed to Luther and to Pomeranus (Bugenhagen), Dr. Brück being the spokesman. Namely, that His Electoral Grace had heard that Melanchthon and Creuziger used other expressions in the articles of justification and of good works than Luther, and complained especially severely that Melanchthon in the publication of the Augsburg Confession had altered some words. This, said the Elector, and other things happen because We and You, Herr Doctor Martinus, are still living; what will happen when we both close our eyes? Our eldest Prince is a child and our brother still young, and there is a great lack of capable men. He thereupon admonished Luther not to hold these things lightly, and testified: Though he well knew that the prosperity of the University was ascribed to Melanchthon's learning and fame, yet he would rather lose this than let injury be done to the truth, even if the University should perish for it. He would commit less sin therein than Duke George, who out of love for the old error lets the University of Leipzig fall into decline." (See: Hist. Lutheranismi III, fol. 165. Junius' Ref. Gesch. III, p. 317.) Here the prophecy of the prophet was fulfilled right gloriously: "The princes shall devise princely things, and by princely things shall they stand." Isa. 32, 11. In contemplating such truly touching fidelity of a godly secular ruler in preserving the pure doctrine for himself and his people, it fills one indeed with sadness to read how men did not shrink from wishing to tear from the head of such a one the crown of fidelity. It is not to be overlooked here that the Elector expressed himself so disapprovingly about Melanchthon's alterations of the Confession, even before the latter made the notorious alteration, in favor of a union with the Swiss, in the tenth article of the Confession on the Holy Supper. For this, as is well known, happened only in the year 1540.*) For this Luther at once rebuked Melanchthon with the words: "Dear Philip, the book is not yours, but the book of the whole confessing Church, and it does not become you therefore to alter such a book so often and in so many ways." (See Vertheidigung des Evangelischen Augapfels. Leipzig 1673. II, 343.) But the Elector had Melanchthon spoken to still more earnestly upon his conscience, dispatching his faithful Chancellor to him at once with the following instruction, found by Mylius in the Saxon archive: "M. Philippus is said to have presumed to alter, soften in certain points, and have printed elsewhere the Confession of the Elector and of the other princes and estates, made before Imperial Majesty at Augsburg, without the foreknowledge and consent of the Electoral Grace and of the others; from which he should justly have refrained, since the Confession is chiefly that of the Elector and of the other estates; whereby it is laid upon the Elector and the other allied estates that they are not certain of the doctrine, and are also unstable; at which the people also took offence." (See Dr. G. Mylii explic. Aug. Conf. Jenae. 1596. p. 6.)

*) Melanchthon, moreover, seems to have become Swiss-minded in the doctrine of the Holy Supper only in the year 1543, as the edition of his Loci of that year shows. (See: Guericke's Kircheng. III, 403.) In this year, therefore, the Elector had the matter investigated once more through the Chancellor Brück, who thereupon reported: "Dr. Martinus says that he would never have thought that Philippus still stuck so stiffly in his fancies. I told him that Your Electoral Grace regarded and held Philip's opinion to be, that he would press it only so long until he saw his time, and especially if he should live to see the Doctor's death. Dr. Martinus thinks, if he does it, he will become a miserable man and will have no peace for his conscience' sake, etc." (Luthers Werke. XVII, 2628.)

We think that it is hereby shown historically, clearly and plainly, that the Lutheran Church of the age of the Reformation was never in doubt whether the Augsburg Confession agrees perfectly with the Holy Scripture; that it never entered her mind that she must subject the same from time to time to a revision; that the alterations made, among others by Melanchthon, cannot be regarded as acts of our Church, but are to be considered unauthorized, most culpable private undertakings; that therefore the so-called General Synod of the American Lutheran Church has in fact withdrawn from the communion of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, in that it will acknowledge only a so-called essential agreement with this fundamental confession of our Church, and therefore several of the most important articles of faith laid down in it (such as those of original sin, of the holy ministry, of the Church, of Baptism, of the Holy Supper, of Confession and Absolution, of church ordinances, of the secular government, of the so-called thousand-