LUTHERANS AND PHILIPPISTS.
The differences between Luther the second and Melanchthon the second, if we may use this term, divided the theologians of the Augsburg Confession into two hostile armies.
The rigid Lutheran party was led by Amsdorf, Flacius, Wigand, Gallus, Judex, Mörlin, Heshus, Timann, and Westphal, and had its headquarters first at Magdeburg, then at the University of Jena, and at last in Wittenberg (after 1574). They held fast with unswerving fidelity to the anti-papal and anti-Zwinglian Luther, as representing the ultimate form of sound orthodoxy. They swore by the letter, but had none of the free spirit of their great master. [503] They outluthered Luther, made a virtue of his weakness, constructed his polemic extravagances into dogmas, and contracted the catholic expansiveness of the Reformation into sectarian exclusiveness. They denounced every compromise with Rome, and every approach to the Reformed communion, as cowardly treachery to the cause of evangelical truth.
Among these Lutherans, however, we must distinguish three classes--the older friends of Luther (Jonas, his colleague, and Amsdorf, whom he had consecrated Bishop of Naumburg 'without suet or grease or coals'), the younger and stormy generation headed by Flacius, and the milder framers of the 'Form of Concord' (Andreæ, Chemnitz, Selnecker, and Chytræus), who stood mediating between ultra-Lutheranism and Melanchthonianism.
The Melanchthonians, nicknamed Philppists and Crypto-Calvinists, [504] prominent among whom were Camerarius, Bugenhagen, Eber, Crell, Major, Cruciger, Strigel, Pfeffinger, Peucer (physician of the Elector of Saxony, and Melanchthon's son-in-law), had their stronghold in the Universities of Wittenberg and Leipzig (till 1574), and maintained, with less force of will and conviction, but with more liberality and catholicity of spirit, the right of progressive development in theology, and sought to enlarge the doctrinal basis of Lutheranism for a final reconciliation of Christendom, or at least for a union of the evangelical churches. [505]
Both parties maintained the supreme authority of the Bible, but the Lutherans went with the Bible as understood by Luther, the Philippists with the Bible as explained by Melanchthon; with the additional difference that the former looked up to Luther as an almost inspired apostle, and believed in his interpretation as final, while the latter revered Melanchthon simply as a great teacher, and reserved a larger margin for reason and freedom. [506]
Both parties set forth new confessions of faith and bulky collections of doctrine (Corpora Doctrinæ), which were clothed with symbolical authority in different territories, and increased the confusion and intensified the antagonism. [507]
THE THEOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES IN THE LUTHERAN CHURCH.
The controversies which preceded the composition of the 'Form of Concord,' centred in the soteriological doctrines of the Reformation, concerning sin and grace, justification by faith, and the use of good works, but they extended also to the eucharist and the person and work of Christ. We notice them in the order of the 'Form of Concord.'
I. THE FLACIAN CONTROVERSY ON ORIGINAL SIN, 1560-1580. [508]
This controversy involved the question whether original sin is essential or accidental--in other words, whether it is the nature of man itself or merely a corruption of nature. It arose, in close connection with the Synergistic controversy, from a colloquy at Weimar between Flacius and Strigel (1560), extended from Saxony as far as Austria, and continued till the death of Flacius (1575), and even after the completion of the 'Form of Concord.' [509]
Matthias Flacius Illyricus, the impetuous and belligerent champion of rigid Lutheranism, a man of vast learning, untiring zeal, unyielding firmness, and fanatical intolerance, renewed apparently the Manichean heresy, and thereby ruined himself. [510] From an over-intense conviction of total depravity, he represented original sin as the very substance or essence of the natural man, who after the fall ceased to be in any sense the image of God, and became the very image of Satan. He made, however, a distinction between two substances in man--a physical and ethical--and did not mean to teach an evil matter in the sense of Gnostic and Manichean dualism, but simply an entire moral corruption of the moral nature, which must be replaced by a new and holy nature. He departed not so much from the original Protestant doctrine of sin as from the usual conception of the Aristotelian terms substance and accidens. [511] He quoted many strong passages from Luther, but he found little favor and bitter opposition even among his friends, and was deposed and exiled with forty-seven adherents. The chief argument against him was the alternative that his doctrine either makes Satan the creator of man, or God the author and preserver of sin.