Alex. Schweizer (Zurich): Die Protestantischen Centraldogmen in ihrer Entwicklung innerhalb der Reformirten Kirche. Zurich, 1854-56, 2 vols. Also his Glaubenslehre der evang.-reform. Kirche dargestellt und aus den Quellen belegt. Zurich, 1844-47, 2 vols.
Aug. Ebrard (Erlangen): Das Dogma vom heil. Abendmahl und seine Geschichte (Frankfurt a. M. 1846), the second vol.; and also his Christliche Dogmatik. Königsberg, 1851, 1852, 2 vols.
Charles Hodge (Princeton): Systematic Theology. New York, 1873, 3 vols.
J. J. van Oosterzee (Utrecht): Christian Dogmatics. Translated from the Dutch by Watson and Evans. London and New York, 1874, 2 vols.
The Reformed Confessions are much more numerous than the Lutheran, because they represent a larger territory and several nationalities--Swiss, German, French, Dutch, English, and Scotch--each of which produced its own doctrinal and disciplinary standards, since the geographical and political divisions and the close relations to the civil government determined also the number of ecclesiastical organizations. The productive period of the Reformed movement, moreover, extended far into the seventeenth century, especially in England, and some of the most important confessions, as the Canons of Dort and the Westminster Standards, were made long after the symbolic development of the Lutheran Church had reached its culmination and rest in the Formula of Concord. Finally the Reformed Church departs further from the authority of ecclesiastical traditionalism than the Lutheran, and allows more freedom for the development of various types of doctrine and schools of theology within the limits of the Word of God, to which it more rigidly adheres.
But with all this variety, the Reformed symbols are as much agreed in the essential articles of faith as the Lutheran, and differ even less than the Augsburg Confession, as explained by its author and his school, differs from the Formula of Concord. [711] They exhibit substantially the same system of doctrine, and are only variations of one theme according to the wants of the national Churches for which they were intended. The Reformed Churches were never organically united under one form of government, and even every little canton in Switzerland (as every Lutheran principality in Germany) has its own ecclesiastical establishment; [712] but they recognized each other as branches of the same family, and kept up a lively intercommunion. Even the leading divines and dignitaries of the Episcopal Church of England, during the sixteenth century, freely corresponded with the Reformed Churches of Switzerland, France, and Holland, and the difference in church polity was no bar to church fellowship.
There are in all over thirty Reformed creeds. But many of them had never more than local authority, or were superseded by later and maturer forms. None of them has the same commanding position as the Augsburg Confession in the Lutheran Church. Those which have been most widely accepted and are still most in use are the Heidelberg or Palatinate Catechism, the Thirty-nine Articles, and the Westminster Confession. The second Helvetic Confession and the Canons of Dort are equal to them in authority and theological importance, but less adapted for popular use. All the rest have now little more than historical significance.
As to origin and theological character, the Reformed Confessions may be divided into Zwinglian and Calvinistic. The earlier were the product of Zwingli and his Swiss coadjutors, the later date from Calvin or his pupils and successors, and exhibit a more advanced and matured state of doctrine, with a difference, however, as to the extent to which they are committed to the Calvinistic system; some accepting it in full, while others maintain a reserve in regard to its angular points and rigorous logical consequences.
As to the country in which they originated and for which they were chiefly intended, we may divide them into Swiss, German, French, Dutch, English, and Scotch Confessions.
To the Swiss family belong the Confessions which proceeded from the Churches of Zurich, Basle, Berne, and Geneva, partly of Zwinglian and partly of Calvinistic origin.
The German family embraces the Tetrapolitan Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Brandenburg and Anhalt Confessions, and a few others. They are less pronounced in their Calvinism, and mediate between it and the Lutheran Creed.
To France and the Netherlands belong the French and the Belgic Confessions, the Canons of the Synod of Dort, and also the Arminian Articles, which differ from the Calvinistic creeds in five points.
The English family embraces the Thirty-nine Articles, the old Scotch Confessions, and the later Westminster Standards.
Besides, there are Bohemian, Polish, and Hungarian Confessions of lesser importance.
Note.--We take the term Reformed here in its catholic and historical sense for all those Churches which were founded by Zwingli and Calvin and their fellow-reformers in the sixteenth century on the Continent, and in England and Scotland, and which agreed with the Lutheran Church in opposition to the Roman Catholic, but differed from it in the doctrine of the real presence, afterward also in the doctrine of predestination. By their opponents they were first called in derision Zwinglians and Calvinists, also Sacramentarians or Sacramentschwärmer (by Luther and in the Formula of Concord), and in France Huguenots. But they justly repudiated all such sectarian names, and used instead the designations Christian or Evangelical or Reformed, or Evangelical Reformed or Reformed Catholic. The term Reformed assumed the ascendency in Switzerland, France, and elsewhere. Beza, e.g., uses it constantly. Queen Elizabeth, in sundry letters to the Protestant courts of Germany in 1577, speaks throughout of ecclesiæ reformatæ, and once calls the non-Lutheran Churches ecclesiæ reformatiores, more Reformed, implying that the Lutheran is Reformed also.
The Lutherans, before the last quarter of the sixteenth century, called themselves likewise Christian and Evangelical, sometimes Reformed, and since 1530 the Church or Churches of the Augsburg Confession, or Verwandte der Augsburgischen Confession. For a long time they disowned the terms Lutheranus, Luthericus, Lutheranismus, which were first used by Dr. Eck, Cochlæus, Erasmus, and other Romanists with the view to stigmatize their religion as a recent innovation and human invention. (A Papist once asked a Lutheran, 'Where was your Church before Luther?' The Lutheran answered by asking another question, 'Where was your face this morning before it was washed?') Erasmus speaks of Lutherana tragædia, negotium Lutheranum, factio Lutherana. Hence the Lutheran symbols never use the term Lutheran, except once, and then by way of complaint that the 'dear, holy Gospel should be called Lutheran.' [713] Luther himself complained of this use of his name; nevertheless he had no objection that it should be duly honored in connection with the Word of God, and thought that his followers need not be ashamed of him. [714] They thought so, too; and, forgetting St. Paul's warning against sectarian names, they gradually themselves appropriated the term Lutheran, or Evangelical Lutheran, as the official title of their Church, since about 1585, under the influence of Jacob Andreæ, the chief author of the Formula of Concord, and Ægidius Hunnius, and in connection with the faith in Luther as a special messenger of God for the restoration of Christianity in its doctrinal purity. See the proof in the little book of Dr. Heinrich Heppe, Ursprung und Geschichte der Bezeichnungen 'reformirte' und 'lutherische' Kirche, Gotha, 1859, pp. 28, 35, 55.
The negative term Protestant was used after 1529 for both Confessions by friend and foe, and is so used to this day; but it must be explained from the historical occasion which gave rise to it, and be connected with the positive faith in the Word of God, on the ground of which the evangelical members of the Diet of Spires protested against the decision of the papal majority, as an encroachment on the rights of conscience and an enforcement of the traditions of men.
On the Continent of Europe it is still customary to divide orthodox Christendom into three Confessions or Creeds--the Catholic (Greek and Roman), the Lutheran, and the Reformed--and to embrace under the Reformed all other Protestant bodies, such as Methodists and Baptists, or to speak of them as mere sects. But this will not do in England and America, where these sects, so called, have become powerful Churches. Reformed is sometimes used among us in a more general sense of all Protestant Churches, sometimes in a restricted sense of a particular branch of the Reformed Church. The Continental terminology suits the ecclesiastical statistics of the sixteenth century, but must be considerably enlarged and modified in view of the greater number of Anglo-American Churches. We shall devote a separate chapter to those Protestant evangelical bodies which have taken their rise since the Reformation.
[711] This doctrinal consensus of the Reformed Creeds has been shown as early as 1581 in the Harmonia Confessionum above quoted.
[712] In this respect the Churches of the United States, being free from government control, are much better organized, according to creeds, without allowing the State boundaries to interfere with their organic unity.
[713] Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Art. XV. (VIII. p. 213 ed. Müller): 'Das liebe, heilige Evangelium nennen sie [the Papists] Lutherisch.' The name of Luther, however, is often honorably mentioned, especially in the Formula of Concord.
[714] 'Wahr ist's,' he says (Works, Erl. ed. Vol. XXVIII. p. 316), 'dass du bei Leib und Seele nicht sol1st sagen: ich bin Lutherisch oder Päpstisch; denn derselben ist keiner für dich gestorben, noch dein Meister, sondern allein Christus, und sollst dich (als) Christen bekennen. Aber wenn du es dafür hältst, dass des Luthers Lehre evangelisch und des Papstes unevangelisch sei, so musst du den Luther nicht so gar hinwerfen. Du wirfst sonst seine Lehre auch mit hin, die du doch für Christi Lehre erkennest; sondern also musst du sagen: der Luther sei ein Bube oder heilig, da liegt mir nichts an; seine Lehre aber ist nicht sein, sondern Christi selbst.' And in another place (Vol. XL. p. 127): 'Und wiewohl ich's nicht gern habe, dass man die Lehre und Leute Lutherisch nennt, und muss von ihnen leiden, dass sie Gottes Wort mit meinem Namen also schänden, so sollen sie doch den Luther, die Lutherischen Lehre und Leute lassen bleiben und zu Ehren kommen.'