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

our land unfavorable to a community in the faith of our fathers, after a
conscientious, prayerful examination of the whole ground, we confess, and
if need were, through shame and suffering, God helping us, would
continue to confess, our profound conviction that this doctrine which Dr.
Shedd considers a relic of Romanism is Scriptural to its core, and that no
process can dislodge it, which will not, carried logically through, bring the
whole temple of Evangelical truth to the ground. No man can defend the
doctrine of the Trinity, and assail the Lutheran doctrine of the Eucharist on
the same principles of interpretation.
Nevertheless, he who is persuaded that the Romish doctrine of
Transubstantiation is unscriptural, is not thereby in the remotest degree
logically arrayed against the Scriptural character of the doctrine of our
Church. They are not, in such sense, of one kind as to warrant this species
of suspicion. They are the results of greatly different modes of interpreting
Scripture, Romanism and Zwinglianism, being of one kind in this, that
they depart from the letter of God's Word, interpreted by just rules of
language. The Lutheran and Romish views differ most vitally in their
internal character and position, the one taking its harmonious place in
Evangelical doctrine, the other marring its grace and moral consistency;
Romanism and Zwinglianism being of one kind in this, that both, in
different ways, exhibit dogmatic superficiality and inconsequence. The
Lutheran and Romish views are differently related to the doctrinal history
of the Church, the one having its witnesses in the earliest and purest ages,
the other being unknown to the ancient Church and generated in its
decline; Romanism and Zwinglianism here being of one kind, in that both
are unhistorical. The Lutheran and Romish views differ in their devotional
and practical working; Romanism and Zwinglianism here being of one
kind, in that both generate the common result of a feeble faith--the one,
indeed, by reaction, the other by development. Nothing could be more
remote from a just representation of the fact than the charge that, in any
undesirable sense, the Romish and Lutheran views of the Lord's Supper
are one in kind.