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

XII. This new birth by the Holy Spirit has baptism as an
ORDINARY MEAN.
XIII. Baptism is the ONLY ORDINARY mean of universal
application.
XIV. Our Church CONDEMNS:
1. The Pelagians.
2. All others who deny that the vice of origin is sin.
3. All who contend that man by his own strength as a rational being
can be justified before God.
4. Who thus diminish the glory of the merit of Christ, and of his
benefits.
Unity of the Church in the doctrine of Original Sin.
In enlarging upon this analysis of the Second Article, it is to be
noticed then,
I. It affirms the unity of the Evangelical Church in the doctrine of
Original Sin. The first words of the First Article are understood before all
the articles, to wit: "The Churches among us teach, with great accord"
(magno consensu). "It is taught and held with unanimity."
The Augsburg Confession avoided all minor matters, and all
statements of doctrine, in regard to which there was any difference among
those who presented it, who were the authorized representatives of their
Churches. It embraces only the leading fundamental articles of the
Evangelical system, and the minimum of detail in regard to these.
A Lutheran, historically and honestly such, cannot therefore hold
less than the Augsburg Confession; hence it is as true now, as it was when
the Confession was given, that our Lutheran Churches hold, confess, and
teach the same doctrine of Original Sin, among themselves, to wit, the very
doctrine confessed by our Fathers at Augsburg.
If men like Wegscheider, Bretschneider, and other Rationalists, or if
Arminians, or Pelagians, or Semi-Pelagians, or for the matter of that Demisemi-pelagians,
who choose to call themselves Lutherans, reject the
doctrine, it only proves that they are willing to bear a name to which they
have no just claim whatever. It is the distinctive position of the
Reformation with which, over against Rome, it stands or falls, that that