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

them in the Lutheran Church was connected with the supposition that the
Altered Confession in no respect whatever differed from the doctrine of
the Unaltered. There never was any part of the Lutheran Church which
imagined that Melanchthon had any right to alter the meaning of the
Confession in a single particular. Melanchthon himself repeatedly, after
the appearance of the Variata, acknowledged the Unaltered Augsburg
Confession as a statement of his own unchanged faith, as for example, at
the Diet of Ratisbon in 1541. In 1557, at the Colloquy at Worms, he not
only acknowledged as his Creed, the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, the
Apology, and the Smalcald Articles, but by name, and in writing,
condemned the Zwinglian doctrine. But a few days before his death
(1560), he said: "I confess no other doctrine than that which Luther
propounded, and in this will abide to the end of my life." Any man who
professes to accept the Altered Confession, therefore, though he rejects the
Unaltered, either is dishonest, or assumes that Melanchthon was, and
shows himself willing to take advantage of his moral weakness. The history
of the Altered Confession demonstrates that not only is it no gain to the
peace of the Church, but produces a yet more grievous disturbance of it,
when the effort is made to harmonize men by an agreement in ambiguous
phraseology, the adoption of terms which are to be accepted in one sense
by one set of men, and in another sense by another.
The Current Editions of the Augsburg Confession:
Latin and German 183
The Current Edition of the Augsburg Confession in LATIN, the one
which is found in the Book of Concord, is the reprint of Melanchthon's
own first Edition of 1530. The Current Edition of the Confession in
GERMAN, however, which is the one found in the Book of Concord, is
not a reprint of Melanchthon's first Edition, and this fact requires some
explanation.
183 Editions and Translations of the Augsburg Confession.
For the Literature see FABRICIUS: Centifol. 109, 585-589.FEUERLIN: Bibl. Symb. [1st ed. 44-69] p. 40
seq. MASCH: Beytrige zur Geschichte merkwirdig. Biicher, [1769] i. 159.- SALIG: i. 695-737. KOECHER:
Bibliotheca theol. Symbol. 145-149. WEBER: Kritisch. Geschichte. Vol. ii. - KöLLNER: Symbol. Luth. Kirch.
226-237. 344-353.--Corpus Reformatum xxvi. 201-264. 337-350. On the translations, of. Weber ii. 4. Feuerlin 60-
64 [66-69.] Rotermund, 184. Danz. 38.