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

interprets under the ordinary, promised guidance of the Holy Spirit, as a
Word in itself absolutely perfect for its ends, giving law to reason, and
excluding tradition as any part, direct or indirect, of the Rule of Faith.
2. It belongs to historical Lutheranism.
II. The proposition we have just advanced, no Lutheran, in the
historical sense of the word, can deny; for the man who would deny it,
would, in virtue of that denial, prove that he is not in the historical sense
Lutheran; for he, and he only, is such who believes that the doctrine of the
gospel is rightly taught in the Augsburg Confession. We do not enter into
the question, whether, in some sense, or in what sense, a man who denies
this may be some kind of a Lutheran. We only affirm that he is not such in
the historical sense of the word; that he is not what was meant by the name
when it was first distinctively used--that is, not a Lutheran whom Luther, or
the Lutheran Church for three centuries, would have recognized as such,
nor such as the vast majority of the uncorrupted portions of our Church
would now recognize.
3. Commended by other communions.
III. That many of the Articles of Faith set forth by our Church are
pure and Scriptural, is acknowledged by all nominal Christendom; that an
immense proportion of them is such, is confessed by all nominal
Protestants. Zwingle declared that there were no men on earth whose
fellowship he so desired as that of the Wittenbergers. Calvin subscribed
the unaltered Augsburg Confession, and acted as a Lutheran minister
under it. "Nor do I repudiate the Augsburg Confession (which I long ago
willingly and gladly subscribed) as its author has interpreted it." So wrote
Calvin, in 1557, to Schalling. Two mistakes are often made as to his
meaning, in these much-quoted words. First: The Confession he
subscribed was not the Variata. Calvin subscribed at Strasburg, in 1539.
The Variata did not appear till 1540. Second: He does not mean nor say
that he then subscribed it as its author had explained it. There was no
word of its author then, which even seemed in conflict with its original
sense. Calvin means: Nor do I now repudiate it, as its author has
interpreted it. The great Reformed divines have acknowledged that it has