From the Diet of Worms to the Augsburg Confession - James Aitken Wylie

hardly conceivable, were to apostatise, and destroy
the faith he once preached, here was a greater
preacher of the truth, standing before the nations,
and keeping open to them the road to a glorious
future.
Was the Confession of Augsburg to come in
the room of the Bible to the Protestants? Far from
it. Let us not mistake the end for which it was
framed, and the place it was intended to occupy.
The Confession did not create the faith; it simply
confessed it. The doctrines it contained were in the
Confession because they were first of all in the
Bible. A terrestrial chart has authority and is to be
followed only when for every island and continent
marked on it there is a corresponding island and
continent on the surface of the globe; a manual of
botany has authority only when for every term on
its page there is a living flower or tree in the actual
landscape; and a map of the heavens is true only
when for every star named in it there is an actual
star shining in the sky. So of the Augsburg
Confession, and all Confessions, they are true, and
of authority, and safe guides only when every
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