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

Lutheranism and that language as such--some mysterious coherence
between its sounds and inflections, and the truths of our Church; so that, in
the very nature of the case, and by an essential necessity, the English
language and Lutheranism could not harmonize together. It is fanaticism
to attempt to narrow our great Church into an English sect or a German
one. The Lutheran Church is neither English nor German; and though
both should cease to be the tongues of living men, she cannot pass away.
The greatest works of her original literature, some of her symbols, part of
her Church service and hymns, were in the Latin language; and surely if
she can live in a dead language, she can live in any living one. She has
achieved some of her most glorious victories where other languages are
spoken. She sought at an early period to diffuse her principles among the
Oriental Churches, and we will add, that she is destined, on these shores, in
a language which her fathers knew not, to illustrate more gloriously,
because in a more unfettered form, her true life and spirit, than she has
done since the Reformation.
Importance of an acquaintance with the Church.
If the question may be mooted, How far shall we adopt the principles
of the Reformation, and of our earlier Importance of Church?--this admits
of no discussion: Whether an acquaintance. with the Church. we should
make ourselves thoroughly acquainted with those principles;--for the
rejection even of error, unless it result from an enlightened judgment, and
a mature intelligent conviction, has no value whatever--nay, is in itself a
worse error than any which it can possibly reject, for it rests on the
foundation on which almost all moral falsehood has arisen. Let our
ministry enter upon a profound study of the history and of the principles of
our Church, and if the result of a ripe judgment shall be any other than an
increased devotion to the first, and an ardent embracing of the second, we
shall feel ourselves bound to re-examine the grounds on which such an
examination has led us to repose with the confidence of a child on that
maternal bosom, where so many, whose names are bright on earth and in
heaven, have rested their dying heads, and have experienced that what she
taught