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

impute to God contradictory wills, as if He who is the eternal truth, were
divided against Himself, or spake one thing and designed another." 232
10. "As God in His eternal counsel hath ordained, that the Holy
Spirit shall, through the Word, call, enlighten, and convert the elect, and
that He will justify and eternally save all those who embrace Christ in true
faith: so also in. that same counsel He hath decreed, that He will harden,
reprobate, and consign to eternal damnation those who being called
through the Word put it away from them, and resist the Holy Spirit, (who
wisheth through the Word efficaciously to work and to be efficacious in
them,) and obstinately remain steadfast in that rebellion." 233
11. "The cause of this despising of the Word is not the
foreknowledge or predestination of God, but the perverse will of man,
which refuses or wrests that mean and instrument of the Holy Spirit which
God offers to man in that He calls him, and which resists the Holy Ghost.
as Christ sayeth:' How often would I have gathered together and ye would
not.'" 234
Finally, The Formula treats of various factions, heresies and sects,
which have never embraced the Augsburg Confession. The Errors
enumerated and rejected are those of the Anabaptists, "who are divided
into a number of sects, of whom some defend more, some fewer Errors;" of
Schwenkfeldians; of the New Arians; and of the New Antitrinitarians, who,
as here characterized, are either Tritheists, or Subordinationists.
Such is the doctrine, such are the antitheses of the Formula of
Concord. They are in every part consonant with Holy Scripture, with the
General Creeds, and with the earlier Confessions of the Lutheran Church.
The Formula is but the old doctrine repeated, systematized, applied and
defended. The chief charge against the Formula of Concord is that it
caused a complete separation between the Lutheran and the Zwinglian-
Calvinistic Churches. This is a great mistake. The cause of the separation
was the divergent convictions and principles on both sides. The Formula
did not originate a single one of the questions it settled. But the Formula
of Concord was not
232 Formula Concordiae, 807.
233 Ibid, 808.
234 Ibid, 809.