Untitled - Rore Sanctifica

Ixiv Introductory Essay.
"
"
the Evangelical Church
vinism, wrought in
of the former King of Prussia. Those who
looked at the words only of the Tenth Article of
the Augsburg Confession (either in its original
form, or in its altered form, if construed in any
degree in the sense of the original form) thought
that the Lutherans gave up a truth. In fact,
they had none to give up.
It might be almost said that Luther had one
doctrine, viz., this personal belief as to one s
own justification through this act of faith, that
oneself was justified. He himself said some
where, or it was said for him by Melanchthon,
that not the indulgences, nor the cultus of the
saints, &c.,
were the cause of the German re
formation, but the previous
absence of this
belief as to man s justification. He called it
"the turning point of a standing or falling
Church." The history of Lutheranism has
shown that the doctrine of justification which
he is invented, the token of one
"
falling."
It is then utterly beside and short of the
real question to treat of this proposed connection
with the Scandinavian bodies, as having for an
object "the rectification of the Danish Episco
pate" (as the conferring of the Episcopate
upon those who, since the succession has never
been maintained, are not even Priests, has been
strangely called).
It would be the acknowledg-
* Col. Ch. Chr., 1866, p. 306; 1867, p. 40.