§ 141.8. The Flacian Controversy about Original Sin, A.D. 1560-1575.—In the heat of the controversy with Strigel at the conference at Weimar, in A.D. 1560, Flacius had committed himself to the statement that original sin in man is not something accidental, but something substantial. His own friends now urged him to retract this proposition, which his opponents had branded as Manichæan. Its author had not indeed intended it in the bad sense which it might be supposed to bear. Flacius, however, was of a character too dogged and obstinate to agree to recall what he had uttered. Expelled with the rest of the Lutherans in A.D. 1562, and not recalled with them in A.D. 1567, he wandered without any fixed place of abode, driven away from almost every place that he entered, until shortly before his death he recalled his overhasty expression. He died in the hospital at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, in A.D. 1575. In him a powerful character and an amazing wealth of learning were utterly lost in consequence of unpropitious circumstances, which were partly his fault and partly his misfortune.
§ 141.9. The Lutheran Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.—The union effected by the Wittenberg Concord of A.D. 1536 (§ [133, 8]) with the South German cities, which originally favoured Zwinglian views, had been in many cases threatening to dissolve again, and the attacks of the men of Zürich obliged Luther in A.D. 1544 to compose his last “Confession of the Holy Sacrament against the Fanatics.” The breach with the Zwinglians was now seen to be irreparable, but it appeared as if it were yet possible to come to an understanding with the more profound theory of the Lord’s Supper set forth by Calvin. To carry out this union was a thought very dear to the heart of Melanchthon. He had the conviction, not indeed that the Lutheran doctrine of the real presence of the body and blood in the bread and wine is erroneous, but rather that by the Calvinistic doctrine of a spiritual enjoyment of the body and blood of Christ in the supper by means of faith no essential element of religious truth was lost, and so he sought thereby to get over the difference in confession and doctrine. But with this explanation the strict Lutherans were by no means satisfied, and long continued and extremely passionate discussions were carried on in the various Lutheran countries, especially in Lower Saxony, in the Palatinate, and in the electorate. But the controversy was not restricted to the question of the supper; it rather went back upon a deeper foundation. Luther, carrying out the principles of the third and fourth œcumenical councils, had taught that the personal connection of the two natures in Christ implies a communication of the attributes of the one to the other, communicatio idiomatum, that therefore Christ, since He has by His ascension entered again upon the full exercise of His attributes, is, as God-Man, even in respect of His body, omnipresent, ubiquitas corporis Christi, and refused to allow himself to be perplexed by the incomprehensibility for the human understanding of an omnipresent body. It is here that we come upon the radical distinction between Luther’s view and that of Zwingli and Calvin, according to which the body of Christ cannot be at one and the same time in heaven at God’s right hand and on the earth in bread and wine. But Calvin, as well as Zwingli, from his very intellectual constitution, could only regard the Lutheran doctrine of the ubiquity of the glorified body of Christ as an utter absurdity, and so, repudiating the communicatio idiomatum, he taught that the glorification of Christ’s body is restricted to its transfiguration, and that now in heaven, as before upon the earth, it can be present only in one place. A necessary consequence of this view was the rejection of His corporeal presence in the supper, and at the very most the admission of a communication in the sacrament to believers of a spiritual influence from the glorified body of Christ.—The ablest vindicator of the Lutheran doctrine of the supper in this aspect of its development was the Württemberg reformer John Brenz (§ [133, 3]). In the Syngramma Suevicum of A.D. 1525 (§ [131, 1]), he has taken his place most decidedly on the side of Luther, and this he had also done again, in A.D. 1529, at the Marburg Conference (§ [132, 4]). Then in A.D. 1559, as provost in Stuttgart, in consequence of the doubtful attitude of a Swabian pastor on the question of the supper, he summoned a synod at Stuttgart, before which he laid a confession which expressed the doctrine of the supper and the ubiquity in strict accordance with Lutheran views. In defence of the idea of ubiquity he quoted Ephesians iv. 10, as affording sufficient Scripture support. The synod unanimously adopted it, and the duke gave approval to this Confessio et doctr. theologor. et ministror. Verbi Dei in Ducatu Wirtb. de vera præsentia Corp. et sang, J. Chr. in Cœna Domini, by ordering that all preachers should adopt it, and that it should have symbolic authority throughout the Württemberg church. Melanchthon, who had hitherto been on particularly intimate terms with Brenz, was very indignant at this “unseasonable” creed-making in “barbarous Latin.” Brenz, however, would not be deterred from giving more adequate expression and development to the objectionable dogma, and for this purpose published, in A.D. 1560, his book, De personali unione duarum natur. in Christo.
§ 141.10. Cryptocalvinism in its First Stage, A.D. 1552-1574.—The struggle of the Gnesio-Lutherans against Calvin’s doctrine of the supper, and the secret favour shown toward it by several Lutheran theologians, was begun in A.D. 1552 by Joachim Westphal, pastor in Hamburg. Calvin and Bullinger were not slow in giving him a sharp rejoinder. In a yet more violent form the dispute broke out in Bremen, where the cathedral preacher Hardenberg, and in Heidelberg, where the deacon Klebitz, entered the lists against the Lutheran dogma. In both cases the struggle ended in the defeat of Lutheranism (§ [144, 1], [2]). In Wittenberg, too, the Philippists George Major, Paul Eber, Paul Crell, etc., supported by the very influential court physician of the electoral court of Saxony, Caspar Peucer, Melanchthon’s son-in-law, from A.D. 1559 successfully advanced the interests of Cryptocalvinism. Melanchthon himself, however, was not to live to see the troubles that arose over this, a truly gracious dispensation of Providence on behalf of a man already sorely borne down and trembling with hypochondriac fears, to have him thus delivered a rabie theologicorum. He died on 19th April, A.D. 1560. While the Elector Augustus, A.D. 1553-1586, intended that his Wittenberg should always be the main stronghold of strict Lutheranism, the Philippists were always coming forward with more and more boldness, and sought to prepare the way for themselves by getting all places filled with members of their party. They persuaded the elector to give a nominative authority throughout Saxony to a collection of Melanchthonian doctrinal and confessional documents compiled by them, Corpus doctrinæ Philippicum s. Misnicum, 1560. The Wittenberg Catechism, Catechesis, etc., ad usum scholar. puerilium, 1571, set forth a doctrine of the sacraments and the person of Christ so manifestly Calvinistic, that even the elector was obliged to give way on account of the strong objections brought against it. The Philippists, however, succeeded in satisfying him by the Consensus Dresdensis, of 10th Oct., A.D. 1571, to this extent, that after the death of Duke John William, in the exercise of his authority as regent, he was induced to expel the Lutheran zealots Wigand and Hesshus from Jena, and in A.D. 1573 had more than a hundred clergymen of the duchy of Saxony deposed. In Breslau their interests were also zealously advanced by the influential imperial physician, John Krafft, to whom the Emperor Maximilian II. had granted a patent of nobility in A.D. 1568, with the new name of Crato von Crafftheim. Another Silesian physician, Joachim Curæus, also a scholar of Melanchthon, published in A.D. 1574, without any indication of author’s name, place of publication, or date of issue, his Exegesis perspicua controversiæ de cœna, which represented Melanchthon’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper as the only tenable one, controverted that of the Lutherans as popish, eulogized that of the Reformed church as one most honouring to God, and urgently counselled union with the Calvinists. The warm recommendation of this treatise on the part of the Wittenberg Philippists, however, rather contributed to its failure. For now, at last, even the elector had become convinced of the danger that threatened Lutheranism through hints given him by the princes, and information obtained from intercepted letters. The Philippists were banished, their chiefs thrown into prison, Peucer being confined for twelve years, A.D. 1574-1586. A thanksgiving service in all the churches and memorial medal celebrated the rooting out in A.D. 1574 of Calvinism, and the final victory of restored Lutheranism.—In Denmark, Nicholas Hemming, pastor and professor at Copenhagen, distinguished alike by adequate scholarship and rich literary activity, and by mildness and temperateness of character, and hence designated the Preceptor of Denmark, was the recognised head of the Melanchthonian school. As a decided opponent of the doctrine of ubiquity, though otherwise on all points, and especially in his doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, a good Lutheran, he fell under the suspicion of the German Gnesio-Lutherans as a Cryptocalvinist, and was accordingly opposed by them. In A.D. 1579, by order of the Elector Augustus, his brother-in-law, the King of Denmark removed him from his offices in Copenhagen, appointing him to a canonry in the cathedral at Roeskilde, where in A.D. 1600 he died.
§ 141.11. The Frankfort Compact, A.D. 1558, and the Naumburg Assembly of Princes, A.D. 1561.—After the disgraceful issue of the Worms Conference of A.D. 1557 (§ [137, 6]), the Protestant princes, the electors Augustus of Saxony, Joachim of Brandenburg, and Ottheinrich of the Palatinate, with Philip of Hesse, Christopher of Württemberg, and the Count-palatine Wolfgang, who were gathered together about the Emperor Ferdinand, consulted as to the means which they should employ to insure and confirm the threatened unity of the evangelical church of Germany. The result of their deliberations was, that they agreed to sign a statement drawn up by Melanchthon and known by the name of the Frankfort Compact, in which they declared anew their unanimous attachment to the doctrine set forth in the Augustana, the Variata, and the Saxonica (§ [136, 8]), and in regard to controversial questions that had been discussed within the church expressed themselves in moderate terms as inclined to the views of Melanchthon. The Flacian party in Jena hastened to set forth their opposing sentiments in the manifesto of A.D. 1559, already referred to, in which the strict Gnesio-Lutheranism was laid down in the hardest and boldest manner possible.—The divisions that arose within the Lutheran church after Melanchthon’s death and the imminent reassembling of the Tridentine Council led the evangelical princes of Germany, who, with the exception of Philip of Hesse, all belonged to a new generation, once more to put forth every effort to restore unity by adoption of a common evangelical confession. At the Assembly of Princes appointed to meet for this purpose at Naumburg in A.D. 1561, most of them appeared personally. There was no thought of preparing a new confession, because it was feared that in those times of agitation it might be impossible to draw up such a document, or that, even if they succeeded in doing so, it might not close the breach, but rather widen it. Thus the only alternative remaining was to attempt the healing of the schism by reverting to the standpoint of the Augsburg Confession. But then the question arose whether the original form of statement of A.D. 1530, or its later elaboration of A.D. 1540, should be taken as the basis of union negotiations.—This at least was to be said in favour of the latter, that it had been unanimously adopted as the common confession of all the evangelicals of Germany at the peace Conference of Worms in A.D. 1540, where even Calvin had signed it, and at Regensburg in A.D. 1541 (§ [135, 2], [3]); and now Philip of Hesse and Frederick III. of the Palatinate came forward decidedly in its favour. But all the more persistently did the Duke John Frederick of Saxony oppose it, and make every endeavour to get the rest of the princes to give their votes in favour of the Augsburg Confession of A.D. 1530. But the duke’s further wish to have added to it the Schmalcald Articles found very little favour. Finally a compromise was effected, in accordance with which, in a newly drawn up preface, the Apology of the Augustana, as well as the edition of A.D. 1540, was acknowledged, while the Schmalcald Articles, as well as the Confessio Saxonica (§ [136, 8]) and the Frankfort Compact, were passed over in silence. John Frederick now demanded the adoption of an express condemnation of the Calvinising Sacramentarians. This led to a hot discussion between him and his father-in-law, the elector-palatine. He took his departure on the following day without having received his dismissal, leaving behind him a sharply worded protest. Ulrich of Mecklenburg also refused to subscribe, but allowed himself at last to be persuaded into doing so. At the sixteenth session two papal legates personally delivered to the princes a brief inviting them to attend the council. This latter, however, was returned unopened when they discovered in the address the usual but artfully concealed formula “dilecto filio.” Also the demand of the imperial embassy accompanying the legates to take part in the council was determinedly rejected, because that would mean not revision but simply a continuation of the previous sessions of the council, at which the evangelical doctrine had already been definitely condemned.
§ 141.12. The Formula of Concord, A.D. 1577.—Already for a long time had the learned chancellor Jac. Andreä of Tübingen wrought unweariedly for the restoration of peace among the theologians of the Lutheran church. In order also to win over the general membership in favour of peace, he attempted in six popular discourses, delivered in A.D. 1573, to instruct them in reference to the points in dispute and proper means for overcoming these differences. He was so successful in his efforts, that he soon ventured to propose that these lectures should be made the basis of further negotiations. But when Martin Chemnitz, the most distinguished theologian of his age, pronounced them unsuitable for that purpose, Andreä wrought them up anew in accordance with Chemnitz’s critical suggestions into the so called “Swabian Concord.” But even in this form they did not satisfy the theologians of Lower Saxony. The Swabian theologians, however, in their criticisms and emendations, had answered various statements in it, and in A.D. 1576 they produced a new union scheme, drafted by Luc. Osiander, called the “Maulbronn Formula.” The Elector Augustus of Saxony then summoned a theological convention at Torgau, at which, besides Andreä and Chemnitz, there were also present Chytræus from Rostock, as well as Körner and Andr. Musculus from Frankfort-on-the-Oder. They wrought up the material thus accumulated before them into the “Book of Torgau,” of A.D. 1576. In regard to this book also the evangelical princes delivered numerous opinions, and now at last, in obedience to the order of the princes, Andreä, Chemnitz, Selnecker (§ [142, 4]), Chytræus, Musculus, and Körner retired into the cloister of Berg at Magdeburg in order to make a final revision of all that was before them. Thus originated, in A.D. 1577, the Book of Berg or the Formula of Concord, in two different forms, first in the most compressed style possible in what is known as the Epitome, and then more completely in the document known as the Solida declaratio. This document dealt with all the controverted questions that had been agitated since A.D. 1530 in twelve articles. It set forth the doctrine of the Person of Christ, giving prominence to the theory of ubiquity, as the basis of the doctrine of the supper, leaving it, however, undetermined in accordance with the teaching of Brenz, whether the ubiquity is to be regarded as an absolute or as a relative one, if only it be maintained that Christ in respect of His human nature, therefore in respect of His body, is present “ubicunque velit,” more particularly in the holy supper. An opportunity was also found in treating of the synergistic questions to set forth the doctrine of predestination, although within the Lutheran church no real controversy on this subject had ever arisen. Luther, who at first (§ [125, 3]) had himself given expression to a particularist doctrine of election, had gradually receded from that position. It was so too with Melanchthon, only with this important difference, that whereas Luther, afterwards as well as before, excluded every sort of co-operation of man in conversion, Melanchthon felt himself obliged to admit a certain degree of co-operation, which even the censure of Calvin himself could not lead him to repudiate. When now the Formula of Concord, rejecting synergism in the most decided manner, affirmed that since the fall there was in men not even a spark remaining, ne scintillula quidem, of spiritual power for the independent free appropriation of offered grace, it had gone over from the platform of Melanchthon to that which Calvin, following the course of hard, logical consistency, had been driven to adopt, in the assertion of a doctrine of absolute predestination. The formula was thus in the main in agreement with the speculation of Calvin. But it declined to accept the conclusions arrived at in Calvinism by declaring that while man indeed of himself wanted the power to lay hold upon Divine grace and co-operate with it in any way, he was yet able to withstand it and refuse to accept it. In this way it was able to hold by the express statements of Scripture which represent God as willing that all men should be saved, and salvation as an absolute work of grace, but condemnation as the consequence of man’s own guilt. It regards the salvation of men as the only object of Divine predestination, condemnation as merely an object of the Divine foreknowledge.—At a later period an attempt was made to set at rest the scruples that prevailed here and there by securing at Berg, in February, A.D. 1580, the adoption of an addition to it in the form of a Præfatio drawn up by Andreä as a final determination of the controversy. The character of this new symbolical document, in accordance with its occasion and its aim, was not so much that of a popular exposition for the church, but rather that of a scientific theological treatise. For that period of excitement and controversy it is quite remarkable and worthy of high praise for its good sense, moderation, and circumspection, as well as for the accuracy and clearness with which it performed its task. The fact that nine thousand of the teachers of the church subscribed it affords sufficient proof of it having fulfilled the end contemplated. Denmark and Sweden, Holstein, Pomerania, Hesse, and Anhalt, besides eight cities, Magdeburg, Dantzig, Nuremberg, Strassburg, etc., refused to sign from various and often conflicting motives. In A.D. 1581 Frederick II. of Denmark is said indeed to have thrown it into the fire. Yet in later years it was adopted in not a few of these regions, e.g. in Sweden, Holstein, Pommerania [Pomerania], etc. The Elector Augustus of Saxony, in the Book of Concord, brought out a collection of all general Lutheran confessional writings which, signed by fifty-one princes and thirty-five cities, was solemnly promulgated on the anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, 25th June, A.D. 1580. By this means the whole Lutheran church of Germany obtained a common corpus doctrinæ, and the numerous collections of confessional and doctrinal documents acknowledged by the church, which hitherto separate national churches had drawn up for this purpose, henceforth lost their authority.
§ 141.13. Second Stage of Cryptocalvinism, A.D. 1586-1592.—Yet once more the Calvinising endeavours of the Philippists were renewed in the electorate of Saxony under Augustus’ successor Christian I., who had obtained this position in A.D. 1586, through his relationship with the family of the count-palatine. His chancellor Nicholas Crell filled the offices of pastors and teachers with men of his own views, abolished exorcism at baptism, and had even begun the publication of a Bible with a Calvinising commentary when Christian died, in A.D. 1591. The Duke Frederick William of Altenburg, as regent during the minority, immediately re-introduced strict Lutheranism, and, preparatory to a church visitation, had a new anti-Calvinistic standard of doctrine compiled in the so called Articles of Visitation of A.D. 1592, which all civil and ecclesiastical officers in Saxony were required to accept. In short, clear, and well defined theses and antitheses the doctrinal differences on the supper, the Person of Christ, baptism, and election were there set forth. In reference to baptism, the anti-Calvinistic doctrine was promulgated, that regeneration takes place through baptism, and that therefore every baptized person is regenerate. The most important among the compilers of these Articles of Visitation was Ægidius Hunnius, shortly before called to Wittenberg, after having, from A.D. 1576 to 1592, as professor at Marburg, laboured with all his might in opposition to the Calvinising of Hesse. He had also, by his defence of the doctrine of ubiquity, in his “Confession of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ” in German, in A.D. 1577, and his Latin treatise, “Libelli IV. de pers. Chr. ejusque ad dexteram sedentes divina majestate,” in A.D. 1585, shown himself an energetic champion of strict Lutheranism. He died in A.D. 1603.—The unfortunate chancellor Crell, however, who had made himself hateful to the Lutherans as the promoter and chief instigator of all the Calvinising measures of the deceased elector, and yet more so by his energetic interference with the usurpations of the nobles, suffered an imprisonment of ten years in the fortress of Königstein, and was then, after a trial conducted in the most arbitrary manner, declared to be a traitor and an enemy of the public peace, and executed in A.D. 1601.
§ 141.14. The Huber Controversy, A.D. 1588-1595.—Samuel Huber, reformed pastor in the Canton Bern, became involved in a controversy with Wolfgang Musculus over the doctrine of election. Going even beyond the Lutheran doctrine, he affirmed that all men are predestinated to salvation, although through their own fault not all are saved. Banished from Bern in A.D. 1588, after a disputation with Beza, he entered the Lutheran church and became pastor at Württemberg. Here he charged the Professor Gerlach with Cryptocalvinism, because he taught that only believers are predestinated to salvation. The controversy was broken off by his call to Wittenberg. But even his Wittenberg colleagues, Polic. Leyser and Ægidius Hunnius, fell under the suspicion of Cryptocalvinism, and were accordingly opposed by him. When all disputation and conferences had failed to get him to abandon his doctrine, and parties began to be formed among the students, he was, in A.D. 1594, removed from Wittenberg. With increasing rancour he continued the controversy, and wandered about Germany for many years in order to secure a following for his theory, but without success. He died in A.D. 1624.
§ 141.15. The Hofmann Controversy in Helmstadt, A.D. 1598.—The great influence which the study of the Aristotelian philosophy in connection with that of humanism obtained in the Julius University founded at Helmstadt in A.D. 1576, seemed to its theological professor, Daniel Hofmann, to threaten injury to theological study, and to be prejudicial to pure Lutheran doctrine. He therefore attached himself to the Romists (§ [143, 6]), and took advantage of the occasion of the conferring of doctor’s degrees to deliver a violent invective against the incursions of reason and philosophy into the region of religion and revelation. In consequence of this his philosophical colleagues complained of him to the senate as a reproacher of reason, and as one injurious to their faculty. That court obliged him to retract and apologise, and then deprived him of his office as professor of theology.
§ 142. Constitution, Worship, Life, and Science in the Lutheran Church.
In reference also to the ecclesiastical constitution, by holding firmly to the standpoint and to the working out of the system which it had sketched out in its confession and doctrinal teaching, the Lutheran church sought to mediate between extremes, although, amid the storms from without and from within by which it was threatened, it was just at this point that it was least successful. It reflected its character more clearly and decidedly in its order of worship than in its constitution.—The Reformation at last relaxed that hierarchical ban which for centuries had put an absolute restraint upon congregational singing, and had excluded the use of the vernacular in the services of the church. Even within the limits of the Reformation era, the German church song attained unto such a wonderful degree of excellence, as affords the most convincing evidence of the fulness, power, and spirituality, the genuine elevation and fresh enthusiasm, of the spiritual life of that age. The sacred poetry of the church is the confession of the Lutheran people, and has accomplished even more than preaching for extending and deepening the Christian life of the evangelical church. No sooner had a sacred song of this sort burst forth from the poet’s heart, than it was everywhere taken up by the Christian people of the land, and became familiar to every lip. It found entrance into all houses and churches, was sung before the doors, in the workshops, in the market-places, streets, and fields, and won at a single blow whole cities to the evangelical faith.—The Christian life of the people in the Lutheran church combined deep, penitential earnestness and a joyfully confident consciousness of justification by faith with the most nobly steadfast cheerfulness and heartiness natural to the German citizen. Faithful attention to the spiritual interests of their people, vigorous ethical preaching, and zealous efforts to promote the instruction of the young on the part of their pastors, created among them a healthy and hearty fear of God, without the application of any very severe system of church discipline, a thorough and genuine attachment to the church, strict morality in domestic life, and loyal submission to civil authority.—Theological science flourished especially at the universities of Wittenberg, Tübingen, Strassburg, Marburg, and Jena.