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

it, if it be not meant to censure the Confession. It must be granted, that it
opens in an extraordinary manner for a letter of censure: "Yesterday, I read
again carefully your Apology, and it pleases me vehemently." Now come
the supposed words of stricture: "But it errs and sins in one thing, that it
acts contrary to the Holy Scripture, where Christ says of himself, 'We will
not have this man to reign over us'; and falls upon that reproof 'the stone
which the builders rejected.' But where there is so great blindness and
obstinacy, what can you expect but to be rejected. For they do not grant us
the name of builders, a name which they arrogate to themselves, and with
justice; but we ought to glory in the name of destroyers, scatterers, and
disturbers; we should glory in being counted with the wicked, as that stone
itself was counted with thieves and condemned with them." To one
familiar with Luther's style and vein of thought, it is at once apparent that
these words are ironical: they burlesque, and hardly burlesque, the absurd
arguments and use of texts of which some of the Romish Controversialists
of that day were guilty. Luther begins by playfully personating such an
objector. The Confession will have Christ to reign over us, but the
objector urges this is contrary to Scripture, which says: 'We will not have
this man to reign over us.' The Confession moreover is reproved by
Scripture for making a corner-stone of the very thing which the builders
rejected. We are the builders, and you reformers are the pullers down. The
humor of the passage consists in making the opponents represent that as
approval which the Scripture condemns, that as reproach which the
Scripture approves, and in throwing upon them their own claims to be
builders. You are the builders, no doubt, the builders who rejected the
stone which has become the head-stone of the corner, in the Confession.
3. The letter of July 21, 180 to Justus Jonas, speaking of the question
which had been put, 'Whether the Confession had more articles to present,'
says: "Satan still lives, and has observed that your Apology, treading
softly, has passed over
180 Latin: Budd. 169. Coelestinus, 233. German: Walch xvi. 2843. De Wette. No. 1266.