710 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1530.
and gently.”! He would have made the tenth article on the real presence still stronger than it is; would have inserted his sola in the doctrine of justification by faith, as he did in his German Bible; and rejected purgatory, and the tyranny of popery, among the abuses in the second part. He would have changed the whole tone, and made the document a trumpet of war.
The Augsburg Confession proper (exclusive of preface and epilogue) consists of two parts, —one positive and dogmatic, the other negative and mildly polemic or rather apologetic. The first refers chiefly to doctrines, the second to ceremonies and institutions. The order of subjects is not strictly systematic, though considerably improved upon the arrangement of the Schwabach and Torgau Articles. In the © manuscript copies and oldest editions, the articles are only numbered; the titles were subsequently added.
I. The first part presents in twenty-one articles — beginning with the Triune God, and ending with the worship of saints —a clear, calm, and condensed statement of the doctrines held by the evangelical Lutherans: (1) in common with the Roman Church; (2) in common with the Augustinian school in that church; (3) in opposition to Rome; and (4) in distinction from Zwinglians and Anabaptists.
(1) In theology and Christology, i.e., the doctrines of God’s unity and trinity (Art. I.), and of Christ’s divinehuman personality (III.), the Confession strongly re-affirms the ancient catholic faith as laid down in the cecumenical creeds, and condemns (damnamus) the old and new forms of Unitarianism and Arianism as heresies.
(2) In anthropology, i.e., in the articles on the fall and original sin (II.), the slavery of the natural will and necessity of divine grace (XVIII.), the cause and nature of sin (XIX.),
1 “Denn ich so sanft und leise nicht treten kann.’’ Letter to Elector John, May 15, 1530. In De Wette, IV. 17. He calls the Augustana die Leisetreterin, the softly stepping Confession. Letter to Jonas, July 21, 1530.
§ 119. THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION. 111
τος, *)..fession is substantially Augustinian, in opposition to the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian heresies. The Donatists are also condemned (damnant, VIII.) for denying the objective virtue of the ministry and the sacraments, which Augustin defended against them.
(3) The general evangelical views more or less distinct from those of Rome appear in the articles on justification by faith (IV.), the Gospel ministry (V.), new obedience (VI.), the Church (VII, VIII.), repentance CXII.), ordination (XIV.), ecclesiastical rites (XV.), civil government (XVI.), good works (XIX.), the worship of saints, and the exclusive mediatorship of Christ (X-X.). 3
These articles are so guardedly and skillfully worded as to disarm the papal opponents. Even the doctrine of justification by faith (Art. IV.), which Luther declared to be the article of the standing or falling church, is briefly and mildly stated, without the sola so strongly insisted on by Luther, and so objectionable to the Catholics, who charged him with willful perversion of the Scriptures, for inserting it in the Epistle to the Romans (8: 28).!
(4) The distinctively Lutheran views — mostly retained from prevailing catholic tradition, and differing in part from those of other Protestant churches—are contained in the articles on the sacraments (1X., X., XIII.), on confession and absolution (XI.), and the millennium (XVII.). The tenth article plainly asserts the doctrine of a real bodily presence and distribution of Christ in the eucharist to all communicants, and disapproves (émprobant) of those who teach dif-
1 In a letter to Brenz, May, 1531 (Corp. Ref., II. 502), Melanchthon remarks that he did not speak more plainly on this point, ‘‘ propter adversariorum calumnias.’’ In the Apology of the Confession (Art. IV.), he is more explicit, and declares this doctrine incidentally to be ** the chief point of Christian doctrine (precipuus locus doctrine Christiane) in this controversy.”’ Miller, Symb. Bicher, p. 87. Dollinger charges Melanchthon, in his varying statements of this doctrine, with sophistry, Die Reformation, III. 279 sqq. The revisers of the Luther Bible retained the insertion allein in Rom. 3:28.