[1082] On November 14, 1529.
[1083] “Hist. of the German People” (Eng. Trans.), 5, p. 262 f.
[1084] See Luther’s own doctrine, vol. ii., pp. 223 ff., 265 ff., 291 ff.
[1085] Cp. Kolde in J. J. Müller, “Symbolische Bücher”10, Introduction, p. ix.: “There was no mention therein of the Papal power and it was left to the ‘pleasure of His Imperial Majesty, should he see any reason, to attack the Papacy’”—thus the Strasburg envoys in 1537 in Kolde, “Anal. Lutherana,” p. 297; for, as Melanchthon openly admitted to Luther, the Articles must be accommodated to the needs of the moment.
[1086] Kolde, ibid. (“Symbol. Bücher”), p. viii. f. Luther to the Elector of Saxony, May 15, 1530, “Werke,” Erl. ed., 54, p. 145 (“Briefwechsel,” 7, p. 335): “I see nothing I can improve upon or alter, nor would this be fitting seeing that I am unable to proceed so softly and quietly.”
[1087] On the “Gospel-proviso,” our vol. ii., p. 385 ff.
[1088] Cp. Kolde, ibid., p. xxiv. ff. K. Müller, “Die Symbole des Luthertums” (“Preuss. Jahrb.,” 63, 1889, p. 121 ff.), points out why Luther looked askance at any Symbolic Books; the fact is he did not recognise any Church having “a legal and ordered constitution and laws such as would call for Symbolic Books.” G. Krüger says (“Philipp Melanchthon,” 1906, p. 18 f.): “The Confession and its Apology were wrongly interpreted by the narrow-minded orthodoxy of later years as laws binding on faith. And yet why did Melanchthon go on improving and polishing them if he did not regard them as his own personal books, which he was free to alter just as every author may when he publishes a new edition of his work?” Yet they were “the genuine charter of evangelical belief as understood by our Reformers.”
[1089] Cp. J. Ficker, “Die Konfutation des Augsburger Bekenntnisses,” Gotha and Leipzig, 1891, where the “Confutatio” is reprinted in its original form (p. 1 ff.). Adolf Harnack says (“Lehrb. der Dogmengesch.,” 34, 1910, p. 670, n. 3): “The duplicity of the ‘Augustana’ has become still more apparent in Ficker’s fine book on the ‘Confutatio.’ The confuters were unfortunately right in many of the passages they adduced in proof of the lack of openness apparent in the Confession. In the summer of 1530 Luther was not so well satisfied with the book as he had been in May, and he too practically admitted the objections on the score of dissimulation made by the Catholics.” Harnack quotes in support of “the dissimulation” the passage at the end of Article xxi. (“Symb. Bücher”10, p. 47): “Hæc fere summa est doctrinæ apud nos [Harnack: suos] in qua cerni potest nihil inesse, quod discrepet a scripturis vel ab ecclesia catholica vel ab ecclesia romana, quatenus ex scriptoribus nota est.” On p. 684 Harnack says concerning the Confession of Augsburg: “That the gospel of the Reformation has found masterly expression in the Augustana I cannot admit. The Augustana was the foundation of a doctrinal Church; to it was really due the narrowing of the Reformation movement, and, besides, it was not entirely sincere.... Its statements, both positive and negative, are intentionally incomplete in many important passages; its diplomatic readiness to meet the older Church is painful, and the way in which it uses the sectarians [Zwinglians] as a whipping-boy and deals out ‘anathemas’ is not only uncharitable but unjust, and dictated not merely by spiritual zeal but by worldly prudence.” Still he finds “jewels in the earthen vessel”; “but, as regards the author, we may say without hesitation that Melanchthon in this instance undertook—was forced to undertake—a task for which his talents and his character did not fit him.”
As regards the position of the Augustana in the history of Protestantism, Harnack remarks on the same page, that the free teaching of the Reformation then began to develop into a “Rule of Faith.” “When to this was added the pressure from without, and when, under the storms which were gathering (fanatics, Anabaptists), courage to say anything quod discrepet ab ecclesia catholica vel ab ecclesia romana, quatenus ex scriptoribus nota est, faded away, then the movement terminated in the Confession of Augsburg, which while not actually denying the principle of evangelical freedom, nevertheless begins to pour the new wine into old vessels (cp. even the Articles of Marburg). Did the Reformation (of the sixteenth century) do away with the old dogma? It is safer to answer this question in the negative than in the affirmative. But if we admit that it attacked its foundations, as our Catholic opponents rightly accuse us of doing, and that it was a mighty principle rather than a new system of doctrine, then it must also be admitted that the altogether conservative attitude of the Reformation towards ancient dogma, inclusive of its premisses, for instance, Original Sin and the Fall, belongs, not to its principle, but simply to its history.”
[1090] Döllinger, “Die Reformation,” 3, p. 280 ff., with a more detailed appreciation of the Apologia.