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

were the results, nevertheless. If the Church's vote was not absolutely
unanimous, it was that of an immense majority. A Church threatened with
destruction, from the insidious working of error, had risen out of the chaos
created by heresy which pretended to be orthodox. The darkness in which
no man could tell friend from foe had been swept away. Deliverance had
come from a state of pitiful strife and alienation, over which the enemies of
God were already exulting as hopeless, and which would have ended in
the overthrow of the Reformation. But for the Formula of Concord it may
be questioned whether Protestantism could have been saved to the world.
It staunched the wounds at which Lutheranism was bleeding to death, and
crises were at hand in history, in which Lutheranism was essential to the
salvation of the whole Reformatory interest in Europe. The Thirty Years'
War, the war of martyrs, which saved our modern world, lay indeed in the
future of another century, yet it was fought and settled in the Cloister of
Bergen. But for the pen of the peaceful triumvirates, the sword of
Gustavus had not been drawn. Intestine treachery and division in the
Church of the Reformation would have done what the arts and arms of
Rome failed to do. But the miracle of restoration was wrought. From being
the most distracted Church on earth, the Lutheran Church had become the
most stable. The blossom put forth at Augsburg, despite the storm, the
mildew and the worm, had ripened into the full round fruit of the amplest
and clearest Confession, in which the Christian Church has ever embodied
her faith.
Fourth Period.
The FOURTH DIVISION of the History of the Formula of
Concord embraces the events which followed its publication, Among them
may be enumerated, as most important, the following:
I. A number of Estates, not embraced in the first subscription, 1580,.
added their signatures, in 1582. There was now a grand total of eighty-six
Evangelical States of the Empire united in the Formula of Concord.
II. As regards its reception, out of Germany, may be noted these
facts: 1. The Princes and theologians by whom the Formula of Concord
had been given to the world, had made no effort to