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

doctrine of Consubstantiation or of Impanation, and no one could impute
it to them, unless he had failed to make himself properly acquainted with
their views." To return again to theologians, REINHARD says: "Our
Church has never taught that the emblems become one substance with the
body and blood of Jesus, an opinion commonly denominated
Consubstantiation." MOSHEIM says: "Those err who say that we
believe in Impanation. Nor are those more correct who charge us with
believing Subpanation. Equally groundless is the charge of
Consubstantiation. All these opinions differ very far from the doctrine of
our Church."
The insinuations of Rationalism against this doctrine of our Church
only strengthen the affirmations of her great divines. If all the great
Congregational authorities of New England, of the past century and the
present, were quite agreed that a certain doctrine was not taught in the
Saybrook Platform, and the "liberal" gentlemen of the Theodore Parker
school were very zealous in showing that it was taught there, would not
Dr. Shedd consider the affirmation as sealing the negation? Would he not
think that, if it were possible to make a mistake in believing the great
divines, there could be no mistake possible in disbelieving the "liberal"
polemics? We beg him therefore, as he desires to do, as he would be done
by, not to think that our Lutheran Church, historically the mother of pure
Churches, in some sense even of his own Church among them, has ever
believed in the doctrine of Consubstantiation.
Romanizing elements.
One word more on the allegation of Dr. Shedd, that there are
Romanizing elements in our Confession. Nothing is more easy, and few
things are more perilous, than for Protestants to insist that some peculiarity
of this, or that part of a denominational system of doctrine, is a relic of
Romanism. Dr. Shedd makes this the solvent of our doctrine of the Lord's
Supper, just as the Baptist makes it the solvent of Dr. Shedd's doctrine of
infant baptism, and as the Socinian makes it the solvent of Dr. Shedd's
doctrine of the Trinity, of the divinity of Christ, and of his propitiatory
sacrifice. Not everything we learn from Rome is Romish. Not only so, but,
as earnest Evangelical Protestants, we may admit, that deep and vital as