[1840] “If I am right,” says G. Kawerau, “the peculiar Melanchthonian form of the doctrine of the sacrament is pretty widely spread at the present time among Evangelicals, whether theologians or laity, as the form under which Luther’s religious views on the sacrament are to be accepted,” etc. “Luthers Stellung” (above, p. 445, n. 4), p. 41. On this point Melanchthon, as is notorious, really agreed with Zwingli. Of Zwingli, owing to his denial of the Real Presence, Luther wrote: “I, for my part, regard Zwingli as an unbeliever” (“Werke,” Weim. ed., 26, p. 342; Erl. ed., 30, p. 225), and for the same cause he “would show him only that charity which we are bound to display even to our foes.” To J. Probst, June 1, 1530, “Briefwechsel,” 7, p. 354 f.
[1841] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 30, 3, p. 558 f.; Erl. ed., 26², p. 372 f.
[1842] “DG.,” 34, p. 872.
[1843] P. 830 f. Cp. above, p. 44 ff.
[1844] P. 855, n. 1.
[1845] Freiburg, 1887, p. 3.
[1846] Ib.
[1847] “DG.,” 34, p. 866.
[1848] Ib., cp. p. 865: “Luther believed he was fighting merely against the errors and abuses of the mediæval Church. It is true he frequently declared that he was not pleased with the ‘dear Fathers,’ and that all of them had gone astray; he was not, however, clear-sighted enough to say to himself, that, if the Fathers of the Church had erred, then their definitions at the Councils could not possibly embody the truth.... Unconsciously he himself still laboured under the after-effects of the theory that the outward Church is the real authority.”
[1849] Ib., p. 834.