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

that the most decided and persistent opposition it has experienced would
never have been raised. There is no instance on record in which any State,
city, or individual, accepting the Formula of Concord, rejected or objected
to any other of the Symbols. To decide upon acknowledging it, is to
decide really upon the acknowledgment of the whole. Was it needed?
Was it a restorer of concord, or a promoter of discord? Is it a pure witness
of the one unchanging faith? Has it been stamped by the Church as an
authoritative witness of her faith, and is it as such of force and value still?
On these questions it is impossible to form an intelligent opinion without
recalling the main facts in the history of this great document.
Divisions of its history.
This History may be divided into FOUR parts. FIRST: The events
which rendered necessary the preparation of a new Confession.
SECOND: The events terminating in the preparation of the Torgau
Formula. THIRD: The development of the Torgau Formula into the
Bergen Book, which in its revised form appeared as the Formula of
Concord, in the Book of Concord, Dresden, 1580. FOURTH: The
subsequent reception of the Book of Concord. 213
First division. Preliminaries.
FIRST: Among the necessitating causes and preliminaries of the
preparation of the Formula, may be mentioned:
1. Melanchthon's vacillations, real and seeming. These were due to
his timidity and gentleness of character, tinged as it was with melancholy;
his aversion to controversy; his philosophical, humanistic, and classical
cast of thought, and his extreme delicacy in matter of style; his excessive
reverence for the testimony of the Church, and of her ancient writers; his
anxiety that the whole Communion of the West should be restored to
harmony; or that, if this were impossible, the Protestant elements, at least,
should be at peace. The coworking of these, in different proportions at
different eras, produced inconsistencies of the most extraordinary kind,
and, when Luther was gone and the intellectual headship of the
Reformation devolved upon Melanchthon, the lack of self-consistence. and
firmness, which had been his misfortune as a man, assumed the character
of a public calamity. The whole work
213 C. G. F. Walch: Breviarium L S. E. L. 198-219.