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

procure the subscription and cooperation of the Churches outside of the
German Empire. The reasons for this course were various. First, To have
invited the co-working of other nationalities, would have complicated, to
the degree of impracticability, what was already so tangled. Second, The
difficulties which originated the necessity for the Formula of Concord were
comparatively little felt outside of Germany. The whole doctrinal
Reformation, outside of Germany, was in a certain sense secondary.
Germany was the battle-ground of the great struggle, and others waited,
knowing that the decision there would be a decision for all. Third, Political
barriers existed. In some lands where the Lutheran Church had strength,
the rulers were Reformed or Roman Catholic. One of the Reformed
monarchs indeed, King Henry of Navarre, desired to form an alliance with
the Evangelical States against the Roman Catholics, but the States, setting
the pure faith before all political considerations, declined the alliance,
except on the basis of the Formula of Concord.
2. Denmark was the solitary exception to the rule in regard to foreign
lands, an exception due, probably, to the fact that the wife of Augustus of
Saxony was the sister of the King, Frederick the Second. The feeling of
Frederick II. was probably a mingling of aversion, inspired by some of his
theologians who were Crypto-Calvinistic or Philippistic, and of dread, lest
the Formula of Concord should introduce into his land the controversies
from which it had hitherto been free. How blind and irrational the feeling
of Frederick was, is shown by the fact, greatly disputed but apparently well
established, that without reading it, or submitting it to his theologians, he
threw into the fire the superbly bound copy sent him by his sister, the
Electress. On July 24th, 1580, he sent forth an order forbidding the
bringing of a copy of the Book into Denmark, under penalty of the
confiscation of all the property of the offender, and of his execution.
Ministers and teachers, if convicted of having a copy in their houses, were
to be deposed. In spite of this fierce opposition, the Formula came to be
regarded in Denmark with the highest reverence, and in fact, if not in form,
became a Symbol of the Danish Church.