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

into apparently intimate fellowship by Dr. Schaff's temporary engagement
at Andover. The article of Dr. Gerhart is a very able one, and we rejoiced
that so full, and, in many respects, so satisfactory an exhibition of the
doctrines, usages, and history of the German Reformed Church had been
given. At the time, however, we entered a kind, but most decided protest
in general, against what Dr. Gerhart believed it necessary to say in regard
to the Lutheran Church, in exhibiting the contrast between her doctrines
and those of his own communion.
It is our desire, in the Dissertation which we now submit to the
reader, to place in a more permanent shape some facts which were then
drawn together, bearing upon the great doctrines of our Lord's person and
presence. They are doctrines of the profoundest importance in themselves,
and derive additional interest from the fact that on them, primarily, the
great division took place between the two Reformatory movements of the
Sixteenth Century. It is a division which has been fruitful in unspeakable
mischiefs, and which, more than all other causes, has made the struggle
against Rome prolonged and dubious. The responsibility of the division is
a serious one, and rests upon those who were in the wrong upon the great
questions themselves.
II. Difference of the Lutheran and Calvinistic Systems. Its Source.
"The differences of Zwingli and Luther in temperament,
psychological organization, moral character, education, and political as
well as social relations," do not, in our judgment, satisfactorily account, as
Dr. Gerhart supposes, for their divergence in the Reformation. The root of
the divergence lies in the very nature of Christianity; and there can be no
satisfactory solution of the differences between the Zwinglio-Calvinistic,
and the Lutheran Reformations, and the Churches which were established
upon them, except this, that the one accepted the true, the other a mistaken
meaning of God's Word, on certain points. That is, and will forever remain,
the real question between them.
III. Doctrine of Christ’s Presence.
We have no less serious objection to Dr. Gerhart's statement of the
Lutheran doctrine of the presence of Christ in