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

y us, and introduced into the churches and schools; some had styled it a
Norm of doctrine and Confession. This had been understood as designed
to take the useful and admirable spiritual writings of Luther, of precious
memory, out,of the hands of pastors and people. Certain points in the
Corpus, as Free Will, Definition of the Gospel, the Lord's Supper, want of
sufficient explicitness toward the Sacramentarians, had been understood in
a sense, or distorted to it, of which our Churches have known, and now
know, nothing." While they therefore regard it as "an admirable, good and
useful book," they renounce it as a "Symbol, Norm, or Rule." "The Norm
of our doctrine and Confession is this, We set and name, first of all, and
unconditionally, the Writings of the Prophets and Apostles, the three
(Ecumenical Creeds, and then the Augsburg Confession, the first,
Unaltered, its Apology, the Catechisms of Luther and the Schmalcald
Articles. If any one, because of the doctrine of justification, desires to add
Luther on the Epistle to the Galatians, we would heartily agree with him."
They then speak with severity of Crypto-Calvinistic books which had been
furtively prepared and circulated, and advise the repression of them.
3. They proposed that a Commission of theologians loving truth and
peace, taking the Augsburg Confession as a rule and following its order,
should prepare a clear statement in regard to the doctrines involved in
controversy. They expressed their approval of the great divines who had
already done so much in this direction, Chytraeus, Chemnitz, and
Andreae, and added the name of Marbach.
II. 1575. Nov. 14. The Saxon, Henneberg and Würtemberg union of
action. Though the earlier steps of this concerted action preceded the
Lichtenberg Convention, it yet, because of its close connection with the
Maulbrunn Formula, is more naturally placed here.
1. It was said by an old French Chronicler, that the English are sad
even in their mirth. It might be said of our pious Princes of the Sixteenth
Century that they were religious even at their amusements. The Elector
Augustus met George Ernest, the old Count of Henneberg, at the hunt, and
in a conversation