During Luther's lifetime the Lutheran Church had taken a firm and final position over against the Roman Catholic. The Augsburg Confession was the rallying point of the friends of the revised faith. The Apology detended the Confession in Melancthon's incomparable manner; the Schmalcald Articles gave forth Luther's trumpet note of a battle in which no quarter could now be given— a battle for victory or death. The people had their Manual in the Shorter Catechism, and the pastors, in using it, had the Larger Catechism, the best commentary on the lesser. Yet these immortal docu- ments did not exhaust the development of the faith. Even in the individual peculiarities of Luther and Me- lancthon there were impulses to conflicting tendencies. After Luther's death the Lutheran Church was threat- ened with a schism, which might have been followed by
the complete triumph of Rome over the whole reforma- tory work. On the one side was the gentler, unioiiistic tendency of Jlclancthon and his party (the Philippists), yearning for union, and temporizing sometimes with Cal- vinism, and yet more frequently with Romanism. On the other side stood the stricter party, headed by Ams- dorf, Flacius, and Wigand. Over against the Church of Rome on the one side, and the Reformed Church on the other, the Lutheran Church insisted earnestly on the doctrines which distinguished and separated her from both. She was unwiUing that open questions should be perpetuated, and desired that the points of controversy shoidd be adjusted and closed. Shall the- ology be simply a mode of thinking, or shall it be a system of faith ? was the question involved. Shall it be a ball for the play of theologians, or a world for the firm footing of believers? The controversies which now arose took their root in questions which involved the relations of the two parties, on the one side to Ro- manism, on the other to Calvinism. Toward the Church of Rome the question in controversy had reference to the doctrines of redemption and justification. The intellect- ual centres of these struggles were the universities (q.v.). Wittenberg at this period was the home of the Melanc- thonian theology. Its great antagonist in the interests of the conservative Lutheranism was Jena, which for va- rious causes — some of the subordinate ones, no doubt, be- ing of a political character — had been founded in 1558 by the older Saxon line. It was the citadel of conserv- ative Lutheranism until its exponents were driven from it for conscience sake. Their refuge proved to be IMagde- burg. This period reaches its culmination in the prep- aration of the Fonnula Concoi-diw, in which the Swa- bian tendency, whose great representatives were Bren- tius and Andreii, obtained official recognition (compare ^chrsnA, Geschichte der Abendmahlslehre). The ortho- doxy thus fixed was dominant from this time to the beginning of the 18th century. Its elaborate polemics were built up on almost imfircgnable doctrinal author- ity. The scholastic acuteness and drj-ness more and more stipplanted the freer and more vital faith of the Reformation. The religion of the heart was too much absorbed into the elaborate system of theology. The temple was solid and grand, but the hearthstones of the people were too often co'.d. George Calixtus (1586- 1656) revived in Helmstadt the humanism of Melanc- thon. His school became involved with orthodoxy in the Syncretistic controversy (q. v.). It sought, in the interests of Church peace, to soften the asperities of dogmatic disputes and the exclusiveness of the doctrinal systems. The plan on which it proposed to accomplish this result was to distinguish between fundamentals and non-fundamentals, and to return to the yet largely vague and general expressions of the first five centuries, which, while they regarded a pure faith as necessary to salva- tion, endured, without deciding the conflicting opinions on various points. The most unsparing and one of the ablest opponents of this tendency was Abraham Calo- vius (q. v.). Spener jiroduccd a revival of religious feel- ing by pietism. This active Christianity was needed in opposition to the one-sided scholasticism which had grown up in the Church. So far it revived the truer Lutheranism of the first vera. But it soon deviated into an outward form of religious life. The Biblical theology of its representatives degenerated into arbitrary inter- pretations and applications of Scripture. Pietism (q. v.), in various shades, made good its footing in the Church. It wrought in its better forms a more earnest spirit in theology. Next to Spener, as a representative of the best type of pietism, was Aug. Hermann Francke (q.v.). Its most distinguished opponents were Joliann, Benedict Carpzov (q. v.) and Valentine Ernest Loscher (q. v.). The inflexible narrowness of the Church life was alleged as a ground of separation from the Church by the mystical fellowships which attached themselves to J. Bohme, Gichtel. and Pippel, and by the Church of the Brethren. By these movements, and by Beugel
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