Philip Schaff · 57 of 132

The Form of Concord. A.D. 1577. · Part 1

§ 45. The Form of Concord. A.D. 1577.

Literature.

I. The text of the 'Form of Concord' is found in all the editions of the 'Book of Concord' (Concordienbuch), see p. 220.

Heinr. Ludw. Jul. Heppe (Professor in Marburg, an indefatigable investigator of the early history of German Protestantism In the interest of Melanchthonianism): Der Text der Bergischen Concordienformel, verglichen mit dem Text der Schäbischen Concordie, der Schwäbisch-Sächsischen Concordie und des Torgauer Buches. Marburg, 1857, 2d ed. 1860.

II. Jacob Andrkæ: Sechs christlicher Predig von den Spaltungen, so sich zwischen den Theologen Augspurgischer Confession von Anno 1548 bis auf diess 1573 Jar, nach und nach erhoben, etc. Tübingen, 1573. Republished by Professor Heppe in Appendix I. to the third volume of his History of German Protestantism (see below). In the same volume Heppe published also 'the Swabian and Saxon Form of Concord,' the 'Maulbronn Formula,' and other important documents.

Apologia oder Verantwortung des christl. Concordienbuchs, etc. (usually called the Erfurt Book, an official Apology, prepared at Erfurt and Quedlinburg by Kirchner, Selnecker, Chemnitz, and other Lutheran divines). Heidelb. 1583; Dresden, 1584, etc.

Rud. Hospinian (Reformed, d. at Zurich 1626): Concordia Discors; h. e. de origine et progressu Formulæ Bergensis, etc., ex actis tum publicis, tum privatis . . . Tig. 1607; Genev. 1678, folio. (The chief work against the 'Form of Concord.')

Leonh. Hutter (Lutheran, d. at Wittenberg 1616): Concordia Concors; de origine et progressu Formulæ Concordiæ ecclesiarum Conf. Aug. . . . in quo eius orthodoxia . . . demonstratur: et Rud. Hospiniani Tigurini Helvetii convitia, mendacia, et manifesta crimina falsi deteguntur ac solide refutantur . . . ex actis publicis. Vitemb. 1614; Francof. and Lips. 1690. (This is the most elaborate defense of the 'Form of Concord' called forth by Hospinian's Conc. discors, and covers 1460 pp., exclusive of Proleg.)

J. Musæus: Prælectiones in Epitom. Form. Conc. Jen. 1701.

Val. Löscher: Historia motuum, etc. Leipz. 1723, Tom. III. Lib. VI. c. 5 and 9.

Jac. H. Balthasar: Historie des Torgisehen Buchs als des nächsten Entwurfs des Bergischen Concordienbuchs, etc. Greifswald, 1741–56. (In nine parts or dissertations.)

J. Nic. Anton: Geschichte der Concordienformel. Leipz. 1779.

G. J. Planck: Geschichte der Entstehung, etc., unseres Protest. Lehrbegrifs . . . bis zur Einführung der Concordienformel. Leipz. 1791–1800. Vols. IV.–VI. A work of thorough learning, independent judgment, but without, proper appreciation of the doctrinal differences.

Gottfr. Thomasius (Lutheran): Das Bekenntniss der evangel. luther. Kirche in der Consequenz seines Princips. Nürnberg, 1848.

K. Fr. Göschel (Lutheran): Die Concordienformel nach ihrer Geschichte, Lehre und kirchlichen Bedeutung. Leipz. 1858.

H. L. J. Heppe (Reformed): Geschichte des deutschen Protestantismus in den Jahren 1555–81. Marburg, 1852–58. 4 vols. (The last two volumes contain the history of the 'Form of Concord' and of the 'Book of Concord,' and are also published under the separate title 'Geschichte der lutherischen Concordienformel und Concordie.')

Gieseler: Text-Book of Church History. American edition, by H. B. Smith, Vol. IV. (New York, 1862), pp. 423–490; German edition, Vol. III. P. II. (Bonn, 1853), pp. 187–310. (A condensed, careful, and impartial statement of the controversies, with citations from the original authorities.)

Dan. Schenkel: Art. Concordienformel, in Herzog's Real-Encykl., Vol. III. (1855), pp. 87–105.

Wilh. Gass: Geschichte der Protest. Dogmatik in ihrem Zurammenhang mit der Theologie überhaupt. Berlin, 1854–67, 4 vols. Vol. I. pp. 21–80.

Gustav Frank (of Jena): Geschichte der Protest. Theologie. Leipz. 1862. Vol. I. pp. 94–290.

F. H. R. Frank (Lutheran): Die Theologie der Concordienformel hist. dogmatisch entwichelt und beleuchtet. Erlangen, 1858–65. 4 vols. (Chiefly doctrinal.)

H. F. A. Kahnis (Lutheran): Die Luther. Dogmatik, Vol. II. (Leipzig, 1864), pp. 515–560.

Is. A. Dorner: Geschichte der protestantischen Theologie (München, 1867), pp. 330–374.

Chas. P. Krauth (Lutheran). The Conservative Reformation and its Theology (Phila. 1872), pp. 288–328.

Denkmal der dritten Jubelfeier der Concordienformel, 1877. St. Louis, 1877.

NAME. ORIGIN AND OCCASION.

The Form of Concord (Formula Concordiæ), the last of the Lutheran Confessions, completed in 1577 and first published in 1580, is named from its aim to give doctrinal unity and peace to the Lutheran Church, after long and bitter contention. The work was occasioned by a series of doctrinal controversies, which raged in the Lutheran Church for thirty years with as much passion and violence as the trinitarian and christological controversies in the Nicene age. They form a humiliating and unrefreshing, yet instructive and important chapter in the history of Protestantism. The free spirit of the Reformation, which had fought the battles against the tyranny of the Papacy and brought to light the pure doctrines of the Gospel, gave way to bigotry and intolerance among Protestants themselves. Calumny, abuse, intrigue, deposition, and exile were unsparingly employed as means to achieve victory. Religion was confounded with theology, piety with orthodoxy, and orthodoxy with an exclusive confessionalism. Doctrine was overrated, and the practice of Christianity neglected. The contending parties were terribly in earnest, and as honest and pious in their curses as in their blessings; they fought as if the salvation of the world depended on their disputes. Yet these controversies were unavoidable in that age, and resulted in the consolidation and completion of the Lutheran system of doctrine. All phases and types of Christianity must develop themselves, and God overrules the wrath of theologians for the advancement of truth.

LUTHER AND MELANCHTHON.

The seeds of these controversies lay partly and chiefly in the theological differences between Luther and Melanchthon in their later years, partly in the relations of Lutheranism to Romanism and Calvinism.

Luther the Reformer, and Melanchthon the Teacher of Germany, essentially one and inseparable in mind and heart, in doctrine and life, represented in their later period, which may be dated from the year 1533, two types of Lutheranism, the one the conclusive and exclusive, the other the expansive and unionistic type. Luther, at first more heroic and progressive, became more cautions and conservative; while Melanchthon, at first following the lead of the older and stronger Luther, became more independent and liberal.

Luther, as the Reformer of the Romish Church, acted in the general interest of evangelical religion, and enjoys the admiration and gratitude of all Protestants; Luther, as the leader of a particular denomination, assumed a hostile attitude towards other churches, even such as rested on the same foundation of the renewed gospel. After his bold destructive and constructive movements, which resulted step by step in the emancipation from popery, he felt disposed to rest in his achievements. His disgust with the radicalism and fanaticism of Carlstadt and Münzer, his increasing bodily infirmities, and his dissatisfaction with affairs in Wittenberg (which he threatened to leave permanently in 1544), cast a cloud over his declining years. He had so strongly committed himself, and was so firm in his convictions, that he was averse to all further changes and to all compromises. He was equally hostile to the Pope, whom he hated as the very antichrist, and to Zwingli, whom he regarded as little better than an infidel.

Melanchthon, on the other hand, with less genius but more learning, with less force but more elasticity, with less intuition but more logic and system than Luther, and with a most delicate and conscientious regard for truth and peace, yet not free from the weakness of a compromising and temporizing disposition, continued to progress in theology, and modified his views on two points—the freedom of the will and the presence of Christ in the Eucharist; exchanging his Augustinianism for Synergism, and relaxing his Lutheranism in favor of Calvinism; in both instances he followed the ethical, practical, and unionistic bent of his mind. A minor difference on the human right of the papacy and episcopacy appeared in private letters and in his qualified subscription to the Smalcald Articles (1537), but never assumed a serious, practical aspect, except indirectly in the adiaphoristic controversy.

These changes were neither sudden nor arbitrary, but the result of profound and constant study, and represented a legitimate and necessary phase in the development of Protestant theology, which was publicly recognized in various ways before the formation of the 'Form of Concord.' If there ever was a modest, cautious, and scrupulously conscientious scholar, it was Melanchthon. 'There is not a day nor a night for the last ten years,' he assures an intimate friend, 'that I did not meditate upon the doctrine of the Lord's Supper.'

As to human freedom, Melanchthon at first denied it altogether, like Luther and the other Reformers, and derived all events and actions, good and bad, from the absolute will of God. Then he avoided the doctrine of predestination, as an inscrutable mystery, and admitted freedom in the sphere of natural life and morality, but still denied it in the spiritual sphere or the order of grace. At last (after 1535) he openly renounced determinism or necessitarianism, as a Stoic and Manichæan error, and taught a certain subordinate co-operation of the human will in the work of conversion; maintaining that conversion is not a mechanical or magical, but a moral process, and is brought about by the Holy Spirit through the Word of God, with the consent, yet without any merit of man. The Spirit of God is the primary, the Word of God the secondary or instrumental agent of conversion, and the human will allows this action, and freely yields to it.

This is the amount of his Synergism, so called by his opponents. It resembles, indeed, semi-Pelagianism in maintaining a remnant of freedom after the fall, and furnished a basis for negotiations with moderate Romanists, but it differs from it materially in ascribing the initiative and the whole merit of conversion to God's grace. He never gave up the doctrine of justification by the free grace and sole merit of Christ through faith, but in his later years he laid greater stress on the responsibility of man in accepting or rejecting the gospel, and on the necessity of good works as evidences of justifying faith.

As to the Lord's Supper, he at first fully agreed with Luther's view, under the impression that it was substantially the old Catholic doctrine held by the fathers, for whom he had great regard, especially in matters of uncertain exegesis. He also shared his dislike of Zwingli's theological radicalism, and was disposed to trace it to a certain insanity. But his deeper and long-continued study of the subject, and his correspondence and personal intercourse with Bucer and Calvin, gradually convinced him that St. Augustine and other fathers favored rather a figurative or symbolical interpretation of the words of institution, and that the Scriptures taught a more simple, spiritual, and practical doctrine than either transubstantiation or consubstantiation. Owing to his characteristic modesty and caution, and his deep sense of the difficulties surrounding the problem, he did not set forth a fully developed theory or definition of the mode of Christ's presence, but he substantially agreed with Bucer and Calvin. He gave up the peculiar features of Luther's doctrine, viz., the literal interpretation of the words of institution, and the oral manducation of the body of Christ. He also repeatedly rejected (as, in fact, he never taught) the Lutheran dogma of the ubiquity of Christ's body, as being inconsistent with the nature of a body and with the fact of Christ's ascension to heaven and sitting in heaven, whence he shall return to judgment. But he never became a Zwinglian; he held fast to a spiritual real presence of the person (rather than the body) of Christ, and a fruition of his life and benefits by faith. In one of his last utterances, shortly before his death, he represented the idea of a vital union and communion with the person of Christ as the one and only essential thing in this sacred ordinance.

Luther no doubt felt much grieved at these changes, and was strongly pressed by contracted and suspicious minds to denounce them openly, but he was too noble and generous to dissolve a long and invaluable friendship, which forms one of the brightest chapters in his life and in the history of the German Reformation. He kept down the rising antagonism by the weight of his personal authority, although he foresaw the troubles to come. After his death (1546) the war broke out with unrestrained violence. Melanchthon was too modest, peaceful, and gentle for the theological leadership, which now devolved upon him; he kept aloof from strife as far as possible, preferring to bear injury and insult with Christian meekness, and longed to be delivered from the 'fury of the theologians' (a rabie theologorum), which greatly embittered his declining years. He left the scene of discord April 19, 1560, fourteen years after Luther. His last wish and prayer was 'that the churches might be of one mind in Jesus Christ.' He often repeated the words, 'Let them all be one, even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee.' He died with the exclamation, 'O God, have mercy upon me for the sake of thy Son Jesus Christ! In thee, O Lord, have I put my trust; I shall not be confounded forever and ever.' The earthly remains of the "Præceptor Germamiæ" were deposited beneath the castle church of Wittenberg alongside of Luther's: united in life, they sleep together in death till the morning of the resurrection to everlasting life.

LUTHERANS AND PHILIPPISTS.

The differences between Luther the second and Melanchthon the second, if we may use this term, divided the theologians of the Augsburg Confession into two hostile armies.

The rigid Lutheran party was led by Amsdorf, Flacius, Wigand, Gallus, Judex, Mörlin, Heshus, Timann, and Westphal, and had its headquarters first at Magdeburg, then at the University of Jena, and at last in Wittenberg (after 1574). They held fast with unswerving fidelity to the anti-papal and anti-Zwinglian Luther, as representing the ultimate form of sound orthodoxy. They swore by the letter, but had none of the free spirit of their great master. They outluthered Luther, made a virtue of his weakness, constructed his polemic extravagances into dogmas, and contracted the catholic expansiveness of the Reformation into sectarian exclusiveness. They denounced every compromise with Rome, and every approach to the Reformed communion, as cowardly treachery to the cause of evangelical truth.

Among these Lutherans, however, we must distinguish three classes—the older friends of Luther (Jonas, his colleague, and Amsdorf, whom he had consecrated Bishop of Naumburg 'without suet or grease or coals'), the younger and stormy generation headed by Flacius, and the milder framers of the 'Form of Concord' (Andreæ, Chemnitz, Selnecker, and Chytræus), who stood mediating between ultra-Lutheranism and Melanchthonianism.

The Melanchthonians, nicknamed Philppists and Crypto-Calvinists, prominent among whom were Camerarius, Bugenhagen, Eber, Crell, Major, Cruciger, Strigel, Pfeffinger, Peucer (physician of the Elector of Saxony, and Melanchthon's son-in-law), had their stronghold in the Universities of Wittenberg and Leipzig (till 1574), and maintained, with less force of will and conviction, but with more liberality and catholicity of spirit, the right of progressive development in theology, and sought to enlarge the doctrinal basis of Lutheranism for a final reconciliation of Christendom, or at least for a union of the evangelical churches.

Both parties maintained the supreme authority of the Bible, but the Lutherans went with the Bible as understood by Luther, the Philippists with the Bible as explained by Melanchthon; with the additional difference that the former looked up to Luther as an almost inspired apostle, and believed in his interpretation as final, while the latter revered Melanchthon simply as a great teacher, and reserved a larger margin for reason and freedom.

Both parties set forth new confessions of faith and bulky collections of doctrine (Corpora Doctrinæ), which were clothed with symbolical authority in different territories, and increased the confusion and intensified the antagonism.

THE THEOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES IN THE LUTHERAN CHURCH.

The controversies which preceded the composition of the 'Form of Concord,' centred in the soteriological doctrines of the Reformation, concerning sin and grace, justification by faith, and the use of good works, but they extended also to the eucharist and the person and work of Christ. We notice them in the order of the 'Form of Concord.'

I. THE FLACIAN CONTROVERSY ON ORIGINAL SIN, 1560–1580.

This controversy involved the question whether original sin is essential or accidental—in other words, whether it is the nature of man itself or merely a corruption of nature. It arose, in close connection with the Synergistic controversy, from a colloquy at Weimar between Flacius and Strigel (1560), extended from Saxony as far as Austria, and continued till the death of Flacius (1575), and even after the completion of the 'Form of Concord.'

Matthias Flacius Illyricus, the impetuous and belligerent champion of rigid Lutheranism, a man of vast learning, untiring zeal, unyielding firmness, and fanatical intolerance, renewed apparently the Manichean heresy, and thereby ruined himself. From an over-intense conviction of total depravity, he represented original sin as the very substance or essence of the natural man, who after the fall ceased to be in any sense the image of God, and became the very image of Satan. He made, however, a distinction between two substances in man—a physical and ethical—and did not mean to teach an evil matter in the sense of Gnostic and Manichean dualism, but simply an entire moral corruption of the moral nature, which must be replaced by a new and holy nature. He departed not so much from the original Protestant doctrine of sin as from the usual conception of the Aristotelian terms substance and accidens. He quoted many strong passages from Luther, but he found little favor and bitter opposition even among his friends, and was deposed and exiled with forty-seven adherents. The chief argument against him was the alternative that his doctrine either makes Satan the creator of man, or God the author and preserver of sin.

II. THE SYNERGISTIC CONTROVERSY (1550—1567).

It extended over the difficult subject of man's freedom and his relation to the converting grace of God. It was a conflict between the original Augustinianism of the Reformers and the later Melanchthonian Synergism, or a refined evangelical modification of semi-Pelagianism.

Pfeffinger, Professor in Leipzig, who opened the controversy by an academic dissertation (1550), and then wrote a book on the freedom of the will (1555), Major, Eber, and Crell, in Wittenberg, and Victorin Strigel, in Jena, advocated a limited freedom in fallen man, as a rational and responsible being, namely, the power of accepting the prevenient grace of God, with the corresponding power of rejecting it. They accordingly assigned to man a certain though very small share in the work of conversion, which Pfeffinger illustrated by the contribution of a penny towards the discharge of a very large debt.

Amsdorf, Flacius, Wigand, and Heshusius, on the other hand, appealing to the teaching of Luther, maintained that man, being totally corrupt, can by nature only resist the Spirit of God, and is converted against and in spite of his perverse will, or must receive a new will before he can accept. God converts a man as the potter moulds the clay, as the sculptor carves a statue of wood or stone. They also advocated, as a logical consequence, Luther's original theory of an unconditional predestination and reprobation. But the 'Form of Concord' rejected it as well as Synergism, without attempting to solve the difficulty.

Both parties erred in not making a proper distinction between regeneration and conversion, and between receptive and spontaneous activity. In regeneration, man is passive, in conversion he is active in turning to God, but in response to the preceding action of divine grace, which Augustine calls the gratia præveniens. Conversion certainly is not a compulsory or magical, but an ethical process. God operates upon man, not as upon a machine or a dead stone (as Flacius and also the 'Form of Concord' maintain), but as a responsible, rational, moral, and religiously susceptible though very corrupt being; breaking his natural hostility, making willing the unwilling, and preparing him at every step for corresponding action. So far Melanchthon was right. But the defect of the Synergistic theory is the idea of a partnership between God and man, and a corresponding division of work and merit. Synergism is less objectionable than semi-Pelagianisrn, for it reduces co-operation before conversion to a minimum, but even that minimum is incompatible with the absolute dependence of man on God.

III. THE OSIANDRIC CONTROVERSY (1549–1566).

It touched the central doctrine of Evangelical Lutheranism, justification by faith, whether it is a mere declaratory, forensic art of acquittal from sin and guilt, or an actual infusion of righteousness.

Luther and the other Reformers made a clear distinction between justification as an external act of God for man, and sanctification as an internal act of God in man; and yet viewed them as inseparable, sanctification being the necessary effect of justification. Faith was to them an appropriation of the whole Christ, a bond of vital union with his person first, and in consequence of this a participation of his benefits.

In the Osiandric controversy, justification and sanctification were either confounded or too abstractedly separated, and the person of Christ was lost sight of in his work or in one of his two natures.

Andrew Osiander (1498–1552), an eminent Lutheran minister and reformer at Nuremberg (since 1522), afterwards Professor at Königsberg (1549), a man of great learning and speculative talent, but conceited and overbearing, created a great commotion by a new doctrine of justification, which he brought out after the death of Luther. He assailed the forensic conception of justification, and taught instead a medicinal and creative act, whereby the sinner is made just by an infusion of the divine nature of Christ, which is our righteousness. This view was denounced as Romanizing, but it is rather mystical. He did not make justification a gradual process, like the Roman system, but a single and complete act, by which Christ according to his divine nature enters the soul of man through the door of faith. He meant justification by faith alone without works, but an effective internal justification in the etymological sense of the term. He was Protestant in this also, that he excluded human merit and represented faith which apprehends Christ, as the gift of God. In connection with this he held peculiar views on the image of God, which he made to consist in the essential union of the human nature with the divine nature, and on the necessity of the incarnation, which in his opinion would have taken place even without the fall, in order that through Christ's humanity we might become partakers of the essential righteousness of God. He appealed to Luther, but denounced Melanchthon as a heretic and pestilential man.

Osiander was protected by Duke Albrecht of Prussia, whom he had converted, but opposed from every quarter by Mörlin, Staphylus, Stancarus, Melanchthon, Amsdorf, Menius, Flacius, Chemnitz. Between the two parties stood the Swabian divines Brentius and Binder. The controversy was carried on with a good deal of misunderstanding, and with such violence that the Professors in Königsberg carried fire-arms into their academic sessions. It was seriously circulated and believed that the devil wrote Osiander's books, while he enjoyed his meals.

After Osiander's death (1552), his son-in-law, John Funck, chaplain of the Duke, became the leader of his small party; but he was executed on the scaffold (1566) as a heretic and disturber of the public peace. Mörlin was recalled from exile and made Bishop of Samland. The Prussian collection of Confessions (Corpus Doctrinæ Pruthenicum, or Borussicum, Königsberg, 1567) condemned the doctrines of Osiander.

In close connection with the Osiandric controversy on justification was the Stancarian dispute, introduced by Francesco Stancaro (or Stancarus), an Italian ex-priest, and for a short time Professor in Königsberg (d. 1574 in Poland). He asserted, against Osiander and in agreement with Peter the Lombard, that Christ was our Mediator and Redeemer according to his human nature only (since he, being God himself, could not mediate between God and God). He called his opponents and all the Reformers ignoramuses.

Another collateral controversy, concerning the obedience of Christ, was raised, A.D. 1563, by Parsimonius, or Karg, a Lutheran minister in Bavaria. He derived our redemption entirely from our Lord's passive obedience, and denied that his active obedience had any vicarious merit, since Christ himself, as man, owed active obedience to God. He also opposed the doctrine of imputation, and resolved justification into the idea of remission of sins.

Karg was opposed by Ketzmann in Ansbach, by Heshusius, and the Wittenberg divines. Left without sympathy, and threatened with deposition and exile, he recanted his theses in 1570, and confessed that the obedience of Christ, his righteousness, merit, and innocence are the ground of our justification and our greatest comfort.

The 'Form of Concord' teaches that Christ as God and man in his one, whole, and perfect obedience, is our righteousness, and that his whole obedience unto death is imputed to us.

IV. THE MAJORISTIC CONTROVERSY (1552–1577.)

It is closely connected with the Synergistic, Osiandric, and Antinomian controversies, and refers to the use of good works.

The Reformers derived salvation solely from the merits of Christ through the medium of faith, as the organ of reception, in accordance with the Scripture, 'Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.' But faith was to them a work of God, a living apprehension of Christ, and the fruitful parent of good works. Luther calls faith a 'lively, busy, mighty thing,' which can no more be separated from love than fire from heat and light. Melanchthon, in his later period, laid greater stress on good works, and taught their necessity as fruits of faith, but not as a condition of salvation, which is a free, unmerited gift of God.

Georg Major (Professor at Wittenberg since 1539, died 1574), a pupil of Melanchthon, and one of the framers of the Leipzig Interim, declared during his sojourn at Eisleben (1552) that good works are necessary to salvation. He pronounced the anathema on every one who taught otherwise, though he were an angel from heaven. He meant, however, the necessity of good works as a negative condition, not as a meritorious cause, and he made, moreover, a distinction between salvation and justification.

This proposition seemed to be inconsistent with Luther's solifidianism, and was all the more obnoxious for its resemblance to a clause in the Romanizing Leipzig Interim (1548).

Hence it was violently opposed from every direction. Nicolas von Amsdorf (1483–1565), appealing to St. Paul and Dr. Luther, condemned it as 'the worst and most pernicious heresy,' and boldly advocated even the counter-proposition, that good works are dangerous to salvation (1559). Flacius denounced Major's view as popish, godless, and most dangerous, because it destroyed the sinner's comfort on the death-bed and the gallows, made the salvation of children impossible, confounded the gospel with the law, and weakened the power of Christ's death. Wigand objected that the error of the necessity of good works was already condemned by the Apostles in Jerusalem (Acts xv.), that it was the pillar of popery and a mark of Antichrist, and that it led many dying persons unable to find good works in themselves, to despair. Justus Menius, Superintendent of Gotha, tried to mediate by asserting the necessity of good works for the preservation of faith; but this was decidedly rejected as indirectly amounting to the same error. A synod, held at Eisenach in 1556, decided in seven theses that Major's proposition was true only in abstracto and in foro legis, but not in foro evangelii, and should be avoided as liable to be misunderstood in a popish sense. Christ delivered us from the curse of the law, and faith alone is necessary both for justification and salvation, which are identical. The theses were subscribed by Amsdorf, Strigel, Mörlin, Hugel, Stössel, and even by Menius (although the fifth was directed against him). But now there arose a controversy on the admission of the abstract and legal necessity of good works, which was defended by Flacius, Wigand, and Mörlin; opposed by Amsdorf and Aurifaber as semi-popish. The former view prevailed.

Melanchthon felt that the necessity of good works for salvation might imply their meritoriousness, and hence proposed to drop the words for salvation, and to be contented with the assertion that good works are necessary because God commanded them, and man is bound to obey his Creator. This middle course was adopted by the Wittenberg Professors and by the Diet of Princes at Frankfort (1558), but was rejected by the strict Lutherans.

Major consented (in 1558) no longer to use his phrase, and revoked it in his last will (1570), but he was still assailed, and the Professors at Jena prayed for the conversion of the poor old man (1571) with little hope of success. Flacius prayed that Christ might crush also this serpent. Heshusius publicly confessed that he had committed a horrible sin in accepting the Doctor's degree from Major, who was a disgrace to the theological profession.

The 'Form of Concord' settled the controversy by separating good works both from justification and salvation, yet declaring them necessary as effects of justifying faith.

V. THE ANTINOMIAN CONTROVERSY (1527–1560).

Protestantism in its joyful enthusiasm for the freedom and all-sufficiency of the gospel was strongly tempted to antinomianism, but restrained by its moral force and the holy character of the gospel itself. Luther, in opposition to Romish legalism, put the gospel and the law as wide apart as 'heaven and earth,' and said,' Moses is dead.' Nevertheless he embodied in his Catechism an excellent exposition of the Decalogue before the Creed; and Melanchthon, as we have already seen, laid more and more stress on the moral element and good works in opposition to the abuses of solifidianism and carnal security.

The antinomian controversy has two stages. The first touches the office of the law under the gospel dispensation, and its relation to repentance; the second the necessity of good works, which was the point of dispute between Major and Amsdorf, and has already been discussed.

John Agricola, of Eisleben, misunderstood Luther, as Marcion, the antinomian Gnostic, misunderstood St. Paul. He first uttered antinomian principles in 1527, in opposition to Melanchthon, who in his Articles of Visitation urged the preaching of the law unto repentance. He was appeased in a conference with the Reformers at Torgau (December, 1527). But when Professor at Wittenberg, he renewed the controversy in 1537, in some arrogant theses, and was defeated by Luther in six public disputations (1538 and 1540). He made a severe attack on Luther, which involved him in a lawsuit, but he removed to Berlin, and sent from there a recantation, Dec. 6, 1540. Long afterwards (1562) he reasserted his views in a published sermon on Luke vii. 37. He was neither clear nor consistent.