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

elated to the blossom. To it the eyes of all deep thinkers have been turned,
as to a star of hope amid the internal strifes of nominal Protestantism.
Gieseler, the great Reformed Church historian, says: 187 "If the question be,
Which, among all Protestant Confessions, is best adapted for forming the
foundation of a union among Protestant Churches, we declare ourselves
unreservedly for the Augsburg Confession." But no genuine union can
ever be formed upon the basis of the Augsburg Confession, except by a
hearty consent in its whole faith, an honest reception of all its statements of
doctrine in the sense which the statements bear in the Confession itself If
there be those who would forgive Rome her unrepented sins, they must do
it in the face of the Augsburg Confession. If there be those who would
consent to a truce at least with Rationalism or Fanaticism, they must begin
their work by making men forget the great Confession,which refused its
covert to them from the beginning.
4. Its value as a centre of great associations.
With the Augsburg Confession begins the clearly recognized life of
the Evangelical Protestant Church, the purified Church of the West, on
which her enemies fixed the name Lutheran. With this Confession her
most self-sacrificing struggles and greatest achievements are connected. It
is hallowed by the prayers of Luther, among the most ardent that ever burst
from the human heart; it is made sacred by the tears of Melanchthon,
among the tenderest which ever fell from the eye of man. It is embalmed
in the living, dying, and undying devotion of the long line of the heroes of
our faith, who, through the world which was not worthy of them, passed to
their eternal rest. The greatest masters in the realm of intellect have
defended it with their labors; the greatest princes have protected it from
the sword, by the sword; and the blood of its martyrs, speaking better
things than vengeance, pleads for ever, with the blood of Him whose allavailing
love, whose sole and all-atoning sacrifice, is the beginning, middle,
and end of its witness.
5. Its value as a guide to Christ.
But not alone on the grand field of historical events has its power
been shown. It led to God's
187 Theolog. Stud. u. Kritik, 1833, ii, 1142. Schenkel takes the same view.