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

of the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds, and added a confession
on manifold points, held, indeed, potentially and implicitly in the faith of
the pure Church, but never before formally confessed by her.
But, furthermore, the Augsburg Confession, even as a Lutheran
document, is an abiding witness of the right and duty of Christian men, and
a portion of the Christian Church to amplify the confession of the faith,
according to the leadings of God's providence. For the Augsburg
Confession is really not first, but fourth in the Genesis of our Church's first
official statement of her distinctive faith. For first were the XV Marburg
Articles, in which the great representatives of our Church made a statement
of points of faith; then the XVII Articles of Swabach, then the Articles of
Torgau, and as the outgrowth of the whole, and their noble consummation,
last of all, the Augsburg Confession.
The Augsburg Confession, itself, grew from its earliest shape, at the
beginning of the Conference at Augsburg, up to the day of its delivery to
the Emperor. The one faith which it confessed in its infant form, shaped its
phrases, added to its enumerations, guarded against misapprehensions
more perfectly, until it reached its maturity.
III. The right to "change a creed," "by addition," is, if it be fallacy at
all, not a common fallacy, with the assumption of a right to “change by
subtraction." The mistake here involved is in using the word "change"
ambiguously, and to in making it falsely emphatic. We deny the right of a
pure Church to change the faith: we hold that her creed should not be
changed; but we maintain, first, that to cut out articles of faith bodily from
her creed, and to mangle and change the meaning of what remains, is to
change her creed; and secondly, that to leave her earlier creed untouched
and unvaried, to cling to it heart and soul, in its original and proper sense,
and in order to the maintenance of the faith it treasures, to witness again, in
ampler form, by adding clear and Scriptural statements of doctrine, is not
to change the creed, but is the act of wisdom to prevent its change. If a
clergyman, on one Lord's Day, should succinctly set forth the