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

the demands of Rationalism on the one side, of Romanism on the other. In
the "Interims," it came near sacrificing all that had been gained in the
struggle with the Papacy. It confessed. in effect, that the principle of the
Reformation could reach no definite result, that the better path it claimed to
open, led forever toward something which could never be reached. So far
as Melanchthon's great gifts were purely and wisely used, the Formula
fixed these results in the Church. It did not overthrow the Confessional
works in which Melanchthon's greatest glory is involved. It established the
Confession and Apology forever as the Confession of the Church as a
whole. The Book of Concord treats Melanchthon as the Bible treats
Solomon. It opens wide the view of his wisdom and glory, and draws the
veil over the record of his sadder days. Melanchthon's temperament was
more exacting than Luther's. He made his personal gentleness a
dogmatism and demanded impossibilities. The time of the deluge had
come,--a world had to be purified; and it was useless to send out the dove
till the waters had passed away. The era of the Reformation could not be
an era of Melanchthonian mildness. To ask this, is to ask that war shall be
peace, that battles shall be fought with feathers, and that armies shall move
to the waving of olive branches. The war of the Formula was an internal
defensive war; yet, like all civil wars, it left behind it inevitable wounds
which did not at once heal up. The struggle in Churches or States, which
ends in a triumph over the schism of their own children, cannot for
generations command the universal sympathy, with which the overthrow of
a common foe is regarded. All England is exultant in the victories over
France, but even yet there are Englishmen, to whom Charles is a martyr,
and Cromwell a devil. The war of the Formula was fought for great
principles: it was bravely and uncompromisingly fought; but it was fought
magnanimously under the old banner of the Cross. It was crowned with
victory, and that victory brought peace.
Most surely will time bring all that love our Church to feel, that
without the second war and the second peace, the war and peace of
Conservation, the richest results of the first, the