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

from the covert infidels who crept into the Church under the pretentious
name of rationalists, and secondly from unionistic theologians. Over
against this, the unvarying witness of the Lutheran Church has been given
to the pure teaching, the great importance, and the symbolic validity of the
Apology. Let a few facts illustrate this.
1. The Lutheran States whose names are subscribed to the Augsburg
Confession, offered the Apology to the Diet, and the sole reason why it did
not take its place at once, symbolically co-ordinate in every respect with
the Confession, was that Romish bigotry refused it a hearing. The fierce
intolerance of the hour anticipated the objection to hearing anything
further in the way of explanation or vindication of the Confession. Was it a
fallacy of the same sort, for the Lutheran States to prepare the Apology, as
it would have been for them to have come back to the Diet, having taken
out everything in the Confession, which Eck and his co-workers did not
relish? Prepared by the author of the Augsburg Confession, and adopted
by its signers, is it probable that the Apology was in any respect out of
harmony with the work it defended?
2. In 1532, the Evangelical Lutheran States presented it at the
Schweinfurth Convention as their Confession of Faith.
3. In 1533, Luther, in a consolatory, printed, public and official letter,
refers the Christians who were driven out of Leipzig, to the Confession and
its Apology, as setting forth his faith and that of the Church. Both are
incorporated in all the old editions of Luther's works, as so thoroughly an
exhibition of his faith, of his thoughts and even of his phraseology, as
really in an important sense to be considered his.
In the letter to the persecuted Lutherans at Leipzig, 193 Luther says
"At Augsburg, our general (allgemeine) Confession sounded in the ears of
the Emperor and of the whole realm; and then, by the press, in all the
world. Why should I say more? There are my writings and public
Confessions-our Confession and Apology: in the Churches, our usages are
before men's eyes; wherein we superabundantly show what we believe
and hold as certain, not alone in these Articles concerning
193 Werke: Leipz. xxi. 20. Walch; x. 2228.