712 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 τὸ 1580.
ferently (the Zwinglians).! The Anabaptists are not only disapproved, but condemned (damnamus) as heretics three times: for their views on infant baptism and infant salvation (1X.),? civil offices (XVI.), the millennium and final restoration (XVII.).
These anti-Zwinglian and anti-Baptist articles, however, have long since lost their force in the Lutheran Church. Melanchthon himself changed the wording of the tenth Article in the edition of 1540, and omitted the clause of disapproval. The damnation of unbaptized infants dying in infancy, which is indirectly indorsed by condemning the opposite, is a fossil relic of a barbarous orthodoxy, and was justly denied by the Baptists, as also by Zwingli and Bullinger, who on this point were ahead of theirage. The first official deliverance against this dogma was raised by the Reformed Church of Scotland, in the Second Scotch Confession (1581), which condemns among the errors of “the Roman Antichrist” “his cruel judgment against infants departing without the sacrament, and his absolute necessity of baptism.” 3
The doctrine of the second advent and millennium (rejected in Art. XVII.), if we except the dreams of the radical wing of the Anabaptists, has found advocates among sound and orthodox Lutherans, especially of the school of Bengel, and must be regarded as an open question.
The last Article of the doctrinal part expresses the assurance that the Lutherans hold no doctrine which is contrary
1 That the Zwinglians are meant by the secus docentes (in the German ed., Gegenlehr), must be inferred from the preceding Conference at Marburg, and the whole conduct of the Lutherans during the Diet. The omission of Zwingli’s name was due, probably, to respect for his friend the Landgrave of Hesse, one of the signers of the Confession.
2 “They condemn the Anabaptists, who disallow, the webi of children, and affirm that children are saved without baptism.’’? The edition of 1540 adds after “‘sine baptismo” the words “δὲ extra ecclesiam Christi.”’> The Romish Confutation fully approves of the condemnation of the Anabaptists, and calls them ‘‘hominum genus seditiosissimum, procul a finibus Romani |
imperii eliminandum.”’? Corp. Reform., XX VII. 105, 8 Schaff, Creeds, i. 687, iii. 482.
§ 119. THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION. 118
to the Scriptures, or to the Catholic or even the Roman Church, as far as known from the fathers, and differ from her only on certain traditions and ceremonies. Luther knew better, and so did the Romanists. Only Melanchthon, in his desire for union and peace, could have thus deceived himself; but he was undeceived before he left Augsburg, and in the Apology of the Confession he assumed a very different tone.
11. The second part of the Confession rejects, in seven articles, those abuses of Rome which were deemed most objectionable, and had been actually corrected in the Lutheran churches; namely, the withdrawal of the communion. cup from the laity (I.), the celibacy of the clergy (II.), the sacrifice of the mass (III.), obligatory auricular confession (IV.), ceremonial feasts and fasts (V.), monastic vows (VI.), and the secular power of the bishops as far as it interferes with the purity and spirituality of the church (VII.). This last Article is virtually a protest against the principle of Erastianism or Cesaropapacy, and would favor in its legitimate consequences a separation of church and state. ‘The ecclesiastical and civil powers,” says the Confession, “are not to be confounded. The ecclesiastical power has its own commandment to preach the gospel and administer the sacraments. Let it not by force enter into the office of another; let it not transfer worldly kingdoms,” etc. And as to the civil power, it is occupied only with worldly matters, not with the gospel, and “defends not the minds, but the bodies and bodily things, against manifest injuries.” This protest has been utterly disregarded by the Protestant rulers in Germany. The same Article favors the restoration of the episcopal jurisdiction with purely spiritual and ecclesiastical authority. This also was wholly disregarded by the signers, who were unwilling to give up their summepiscopate which they had claimed and exercised since 1526 with the consent of the Reformers.