faith as laid down in the oecumenical creeds, and condemns (damnamus) the old and new forms
of Unitarianism and Arianism as heresies.
(2) In anthropology, i.e., in the articles on the fall and original sin (II.), the slavery of the
natural will and necessity of divine grace (XVIII.), the cause and nature of sin (XIX.), the Confession
is substantially Augustinian, in opposition to the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian heresies. The Donatists
are also condemned (damnant, VIII.) for denying the objective virtue of the ministry and the
sacraments, which Augustin defended against them.
(3) The general evangelical views more or less distinct from those of Rome appear in the
articles on justification by faith (IV.), the Gospel ministry (V.), new obedience (VI.), the Church
(VII., VIII.), repentance (XII.), ordination (XIV.), ecclesiastical rites (XV.), civil government
(XVI.), good works (XIX.), the worship of saints, and the exclusive mediatorship of Christ (XX.).
These articles are so guardedly and skillfully worded as to disarm the papal opponents.
Even the doctrine of justification by faith (Art. IV.), which Luther declared to be the article of the
standing or falling church, is briefly and mildly stated, without the sola so strongly insisted on by
Luther, and so objectionable to the Catholics, who charged him with willful perversion of the
Scriptures, for inserting it in the Epistle to the Romans (3:28).^965
(4) The distinctively Lutheran views—mostly retained from prevailing catholic tradition,
and differing in part from those of other Protestant churches—are contained in the articles on the
sacraments (IX., X., XIII.), on confession and absolution (XI.), and the millennium (XVII.). The
tenth article plainly asserts the doctrine of a real bodily presence and distribution of Christ in the
eucharist to all communicants, and disapproves (improbant) of those who teach differently (the
Zwinglians).^966 The Anabaptists are not only disapproved, but condemned (damnamus) as heretics
three times: for their views on infant baptism and infant salvation (IX.),^967 Civil offices (XVI.), the
millennium and final restoration (XVII.).
These anti-Zwinglian and anti-Baptist articles, however, have long since lost their force in
the Lutheran Church. Melanchthon himself changed the wording of the tenth Article in the edition
of 1540, and omitted the clause of disapproval. The damnation of unbaptized infants dying in
infancy, which is indirectly indorsed by condemning the opposite, is a fossil relic of a barbarous
orthodoxy, and was justly denied by the Baptists, as also by Zwingli and Bullinger, who on this
point were ahead of their age. The first official deliverance against this dogma was raised by the
Reformed Church of Scotland, in the Second Scotch Confession (1581), which condemns among
the errors of "the Roman Antichrist" "his Cruel judgment against infants departing without the
sacrament, and his absolute necessity of baptism."^968
(^965) In a letter to Brenz, May, 1531 (Corp. Ref., II. 502), Melanchthon remarks that he did not speak more plainly on this point, "propter
adversariorum calumnias." In the Apology of the Confession (Art. IV.), he is more explicit, and declares this doctrine incidentally to be
"the chief point of Christian doctrine (praecipuus locus doctrinae Christianae) in this controversy." Müller, Symb. Bücher, p. 87. Döllinger
charges Melanchthon, in his varying statements of this doctrine, with sophistry, Die Reformation, III. 279 sqq. The revisers of the Luther
Bible retained the insertion allein in Rom. 3:28.
(^966) That the Zwinglians are meant by the secus docentes (in the German ed., Gegenlehr), must be inferred from the preceding Conference
at Marburg, and the whole conduct of the Lutherans during the Diet. The omission of Zwingli’s name was due, probably, to respect for
his friend the Landgrave of Hesse, one of the signers of the Confession.
(^967) "They condemn the Anabaptists, who disallow the baptism of children, and affirm that children are saved without baptism." The
edition of 1540 adds after "sine baptismo" the words "et extra ecclesiam Christi." The Romish Confutation fully approves of the
condemnation of the Anabaptists, and calls them "hominum genus seditiosissimum, procul a finibus Romani imperii eliminandum." Corp.
Reform., XXVII. 105.
(^968) Schaff, Creeds, i. 687, iii. 482.