The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

pure. Papal Rome could no more stand before the judgment of the early
writers in the Church of Rome yet undefiled than she could before the
Scriptures. Hence, the confessors declared 2 that, in their doctrine, there
not only was nothing in conflict with the Holy Scriptures, and with the true
Church Catholic, or Church Universal, but nothing in conflict with the
teachings of the true Church of Rome, as her doctrines were set forth by
the writers of the earlier ages. The quotations made from these Fathers, in
the Confession, best illustrate the meaning of this declaration, and prove its
truth. Thus, for example, they quote the Nicene Fathers, as witnesses to
the doctrine of the Trinity; Ambrose is cited to show, "that he that believeth
in Christ, is saved, without works, by faith alone, freely receiving
remission." In the articles on Abuses, the testimony of the purer Fathers
and Councils is used with great effect.
But not because of the testimony of the Church and of its writers did
the Reformers hold the truth they confessed. They knew that individual
churches could err, and had erred grievously, that the noblest men were
fallible. Nothing but the firm word of God sufficed for them.
They thanked God, indeed, for the long line of witnesses for the truth
of His Word. Within the Church of Rome, in the darkest ages, there had
been men faithful to the truth. There were men, in the midst of the
dominant corruption, who spake and labored against it. There were
Protestants, ages before our princes made their protest at Spires, and
Lutherans, before Luther was born. But not on these, though they sealed
the truth with their own blood, did the Reformers lean. They joyfully used
them as testimony, but not as authority. They placed them in the box of
the witness, not on the bench of the judge. Their utterances, writings, and
acts were not to be the rule of faith, but were themselves to be weighed in
its balance. In God was their trust, and His Word alone was their stay.
When the great princes and free cities of our Church at Augsburg, in
1530, laid their Confession before the Emperor
2 Augs. Confess. 47:1.