no symbolical authority, and is often omitted from the Book of Concord.'

RECEPTION, AUTHORITY, AND INTRODUCTION.2

The Form of Concord, as it is the last, is also the most disputed of the Lutheran symbols. It never attained general authority, like the Augsburg Confession or Luther's Catechism, although far greater exertions were made for its introduction.

It was adopted by the majority of the Lutheran principalities and state churches in Germany;3 also by the state church of Sweden, the Lutherans in Hungary, and several Lutheran synods in the United States.1

On the other hand, it was rejected by a number of Lutheran Princes and cities of the empire, and by King Frederick II. of Denmark." Some countries of Germany, where it had been first introduced, rejected it afterwards, but remained Lutheran; while others, in conse

'Tittmann and Hase omit it; Müller gives it (pp. 731-767).

Comp. among recent works especially the third volume of Heppe's Geschichte des D. Protest. pp. 215-322, and the whole fourth volume. The chief data are also given by Gie

seler, Vol. IV. pp. 489-493, and by Köllner, l. c. pp. 573–583.

The Preface of the Book of Concord is signed by eighty-six names representing the Lutheran state churches in the German empire; among them are three Electors (Louis of the Palatinate, Augustus of Saxony, and John George of Brandenburg), twenty Dukes and Princes, twenty-four Counts, thirty-five burgomasters and counselors of imperial cities. The Formula was also signed by about 8000 pastors and teachers under their jurisdiction, including a large number of ex-Philippists and Crypto-Calvinists, who preferred their livings to their theology; hence Hutter was no doubt right when he admitted that many subscribed mala conscientia. Yet no direct compulsion seems to have been used. See Köllner, p. 551, and Johannsen, Ueber die Unterschriften des Concordienbuches, in Niedner's Zeitschrift für histor. Theologie, 1847, No. 1.

It was adopted in Sweden at a Council of Upsala, 1593; in Hungary, 1597. In America it is held by the Lutheran Synodical Conference, and by the General Council, but rejected by the General Synod (see p. 224).

The Landgrave of Hesse, the Palatinate John Casimir, the Prince of Anhalt, the Duke of Pomerania (where, however, the symbol afterwards came into authority), the Duke of Holstein, the Duke of Saxe-Luneburg, the Counts of Nassau and Hanau, the cities of Strasburg, Frankfort-on-the-Main, Spires, Worms, Nuremberg, Magdeburg, Bremen, Danzig, Nordhausen.

6

Frederick II. strictly prohibited, on pain of confiscation and deposition, the importation and publication of the Form of Concord in Denmark (July 24, 1580), and threw the two superbly bound copies sent to him by his sister, the wife of Augustus of Saxony, unceremoniously into the chimney-fire. See Köllner, p. 575 sq.; Gieseler, Vol. IV. p. 493, note 54; and Heppe, Vol. IV. pp. 275 sqq. Nevertheless the document afterwards gained considerable currency in Denmark,

So the Duchy of Brunswick recalled the subscription in 1583. Duke Julius, one of the

quence of the doctrinal innovations and exclusiveness of the Formula, passed over to the Reformed Confession.1 It is a significant fact, that the successors of the three Electors, who were the chief patrons and signers of the Formula, left the Lutheran Church: two became Reformed, and one (the King of Saxony) a Roman Catholic.

OPPOSITION AND DEFENSE.2

The Formula gave rise to much controversy. It was assailed from dif ferent quarters by discontented Lutherans and Philippists, Calvinists,*

3

most zealous promoters of the Form of Concord, became alienated for personal reasons, because he was severely blamed by Chemnitz and several Princes for allowing one of his sons to receive Romish consecration (Dec. 5, 1578), and two others the tonsure, to the great scandal of Protestantism. He was afterwards strengthened by the doctrinal opposition of Heshusius and the Helmstädt Professors, who rejected the Formula for teaching absolute ubiquity. The Corpus doctrinae Julium was retained in Brunswick and Wolfenbüttel. See Planck, Vol. VI. pp. 667 sqq., and especially Heppe, Vol. IV. pp. 203 sqq. These Brunswick troubles brought about an alienation between Andrea (who labored to reconcile the Duke) and Chemnitz (who was deposed by the Duke). In a widely circulated letter of April 8,1580, Chemnitz compared Andreæ to a fawning and scratching cat (‘cum coram longe aliud mihi dicas, wie die Katzen, die vorne lecken und hinten kratzen'). Heppe, p. 214.

So the Palatinate, which, after a short Lutheran interregnum of Louis, readopted the Heidelberg Catechism under John Casimir (1583), Anhalt (1588), Zweibrücken (1588), Hanau (1596), Hesse (1604), and especially Brandenburg under John Sigismund (1614). In this respect the Formula of Concord inflicted great territorial loss upon the Lutheran denominaThe greatest loss was the Palatinate and the Electoral, afterwards the royal house of Brandenburg and Prussia.

tion.

* See lists of controversial works for and against the Formula of Concord in Walch, Feuerlin, and Köllner. Comp. also Hutter, Conc. conc. Ch. XXXVII. (p. 958), Ch. XLI. (p. 976), Ch. XLV. (p. 1033), and Ch. XLV. (p. 1038); Heppe, Vol. IV. pp. 270 sqq.; and G. Frank, Vol. I. pp. 251–266. Hutter sees in the general attack of 'the devil and his organs, the heretics,' against the Formula, a clear proof that it was composed instinctu Spiritus Sancti, and is in full harmony with the infallible Word of God (p. 976).

The rigidly orthodox Heshusius and the Helmstädt divines (in the Quedlinburg Colloquium, 1583), Christopher Irenæus (an exiled Flacianist, formerly court chaplain at Weimar, 1581), Ambrosius Wolff' (or Cyriacus Herdesianus, of Nuremberg, 1580), the Bremen preachers (1581), the Anhalt theologians (1580, 1581), and the Margrave of Baden (in the Stafford Book, 1599).

Ursinus (in connection with Zanchius, Tossanus, and other deposed Heidelberg Professors, who, under John Casimir and during the rule of Lutheranism in Heidelberg, founded and conducted a flourishing theological school at Neustadt an der Hardt, 1576 to 1583): Admonitio Christiana de libro Concordia (or Christliche Erinnerung vom Concordienbuch), Neostadadii in Palatinatu, Latin and German, 1581 (also in Urs. Opera, Heidelberg, 1612, Vol. II. pp. 486 sqq.). It consists of twelve chapters, and is very able. Extract in Sudhoff, Olevianus und Ursinus, pp. 432-452; comp. Schweizer in Herzog, Vol. X. pp. 263-265. Ursinus and some of his pupils defended this work against the Lutheran 'Apology,' in Defensio Admonitionis Neost, contra Apologiæ Erfordensis sophismata, Neost. 1584. Beza wrote Refutatio dogmatis de ficticia carnis Christi omnipræsentia; Danæus an Examen of Chemnitz's book De duabus in Christo naturis, Genev. 1581; Sadeel, a very able tract, De veritate humanæ

and Romanists. The chief objection was to the new dogma of ubiquity.

The Lutherans attacked, according to their stand-point, either the concessions to the Swabian scheme of absolute ubiquity, or the absence of a direct condemnation of Melanchthon and other heretics, or the rejection of the Flacian theory of original sin, or the condemnation of Synergism. The last point could be made very plausible, since the chief authors of the Formula, Andreæ, Chemnitz, and Selnecker, had at first been decided synergists. Chytræus remained true at least to his love and admiration for Melanchthon, which subjected him to the suspicion of Crypto-Philippism and Calvinism.2

The Reformed, led by Ursinus (chief author of the Heidelberg Catechism), justly complained of the misrepresentations and unfair condemnation of their doctrine under the indiscriminate charge of sacramentarianism, and explained the qualified sense in which the Reformed signed the Augsburg Confession in the sense of its author, with wholesome strictures on the unprotestant overestimate of the authority of Luther. They exposed with rigid logic the doctrinal contradiction between Arts. II. and XI., quoted Luther's views on predestination against the Formula, and refuted with clear and strong arguments the new dogma of ubiquity, which is contrary to the Scriptures, the œcumenical creeds, and sound reason, and destructive of the very nature of the sacrament as a communion of the body of Christ; for if the body is omnipresent, and there can be but one omnipresence, it must be present like God himself, i. e. like a spirit, every where whole and complete, without

naturæ Christi, 1585 (in his Opera, Genev. 1592). Of later Reformed writings must be mentioned the Emdensche Buch (1591), and especially Hospinian's Concordia discors (1607), which called forth Hutter's Concordia concors (1614).

'The ablest Roman assailant was Robert Bellarmin: Judicium de libro quem Lutherani vocant Concordia, Ingolst. 1587, 1589, etc. (in his Opera, Col. Ag. 1620, Vol. VII. p. 576). Against him Hoe ab Honegg wrote Apol. contra R. B. impium et stolidum judicium, Fref. 1605. Bellarmin also repeatedly notices the Christology of the Formula in his great controversial work against Protestantism. See below.

See Schütz, Vita Chytræi, and Heppe, Vol. IV. pp. 395 sqq.

This complaint the Erfurt Apology of the Formula of Concord admitted to be just, at least in part. The Formula makes no distinction between Zwingli and Calvin; condemns Zwingli's ' allæosis' (by which he meant only to guard against a confusio and æquatio naturarum) as a mask of the devil; charges the Reformed generally with a Nestorian separation of the two natures in Christ, and a denial of all communion between them; with childish literalism concerning the right hand of God and the throne of glory; with shutting Christ up in heaven, as if he had no more to do with us, etc.

parts and members, and thus the lineaments and concrete image of Christ are lost. Sadeel pointed out the palpable inconsistency between the hyperphysical and ultrasupernatural outfit of Christ's body for the eucharistic presence, on the one hand, and the emphasizing of a corporeal presence and oral manducation on the other, as if this were the main thing in the sacrament, while the communion of the believing soul with the person of Christ was almost lost sight of.1

Strange to say, the Roman Catholics were just as decidedly opposed to ubiquity, though otherwise much nearer the Lutheran doctrine of the sacraments. Bellarmin, the greatest controversialist of Rome, exposes the absurdity of a dogma which would destroy the human nature of Christ, and involve the presence of his body in uteris omnium feminarum, imo etiam virorum, and the presence extra uterum from the moment of conception, and in utero after the nativity. In his polemic work against Protestantism he urges five arguments against ubiquity, viz.: (1.) It abolishes the sacramental character of the eucharist. (2.) It leads to the Calvinistic spiritual presence and spiritual eating by faith-the very error of the sacramentarians which this Lutheran dogma was to overthrow.3 (3.) It destroys the specific effect of the eucharist, and makes it useless. (4.) It is refuted by the other Lutheran doctrine which confines the presence to the time of the use of the sacrament.

'Dorner, in his History of Christology (Vol. II. pp. 718-750), gives an admirable and impartial summary of the Reformed argument. Dr. Kahnis, of Leipzig, from his Lutheran standpoint, thus fairly and liberally characterizes the Reformed opposition to the Form of Concord (Luth. Dogm, Vol. II. p. 590): 'Die Reformirten vertraten den Standpunkt des Verstandes, welcher zwischen Endlichem und Unendlichem abstract (?) scheidend (finitum non est capax infiniti) der menschlichen Natur Christi keinen Antheil an den göttlichen Eigenschaften einräumt; den Standpunkt der Realität, welcher in der Betrachtung der Person Christi, von dem Wandel auf Erden ausgehead, der rein menschlichen Entwicklung Christi freien Raum schaffen will; den Standpunkt des Praktischen, der bei den sicheren Thatsachen der persönlichen Vereinigung Beruhigung fasste, ohne sich in gnostisch-scholastische Theorien verspinnen zu wollen.'

* Lib. III. de Sacramento Eucharistiæ, cap. 17. Comp. also cap. 7, and Lib. III. de Christo (where he refers to the views of Luther, Brentius, Wigand, Heshusius, and Chemnitz on ubiquity).

corpus

His reasoning is curious: 'Quod est ubique, non potest moveri, nec transire de loco ad locum; ergo licet Christi sit in pane, tamen non manducatur, cum panis manducatur, quia non movetur, nec transit cum pane e manu ad os, et ab ore ad stomachum; nam etiam antea erat in ore et in stomacho, priusquam panis eo veniret. Sequitur aut esse inanem cœnam Domini, aut saltem spiritualiter sumi per energiam et per fidem, et solum a piis, qui habent fidem, et hoc est, quod volunt Calvinist«.'

...

♦ 'Si enim corpus Christi ubique est, erit etiam ante usum in pane.'

(5.) It is a makeshift to evade the power of priestly consecration which creates the eucharistic presence.'

Outside of Germany and Switzerland the Formula of Concord excited little or only passing polemical interest. Queen Elizabeth endeavored to prevent its adoption because it condemned the Reformed doctrine, and threatened to split and weaken the Protestants in their opposition to the united power of Rome. She sent delegates to a convention of Reformed Princes and delegates held at Frankfort-onthe-Main, Sept. 1577.2 The Anglican divines of the sixteenth century rejected ubiquity as decidedly as the Continental Calvinists.3 Evangelical Episcopalians hold the Reformed view of the sacraments; and as to modern Anglo-Catholic and Ritualistic Episcopalians, they greatly prefer the Romish or Greek dogma of transubstantiation to the Lutheran consubstantiation.1

The attacks upon the Formula, especially those proceeding from Lutherans and the Palatinate divines, could not be ignored in silence. Chemnitz, Selnecker, and Kirchner, by order of the three electoral

1 Bellarmin (De Sacr. Euch. Lib. III. c. 7), after quoting Augustine against the sententia ubiquistarum Lutheranorum, thus defines the Roman view: 'Nos fatemur Christi corpus non esse ubique diffusum; et ubicunque est, habere suam formam et partium situm, ac dispositionem ; quamvis hæc figura, forma, dispositio partium in cœlo conspiciatur, ubi locum replet; in Sacramento autem sit quidem, sed non repleat locum, nec videri a nobis possit.'

Comp. on Elizabeth's action and the Convent of Frankfort, Hutter's Concordia concors, Cap. XVI. and XVII. (pp. 513-523); Planck, Vol. VI. pp. 591-611; Heppe, Vol. IV. pp. 5 sqq., 16 sqq., and 72 sqq.

'Cranmer was at first inclined to the Lutheran theory, but gave it up afterwards. His fellow-Reformers held the Zwinglian or Calvinistic view. Bishop Hooper thus speaks of ubiquity: 'Such as say that heaven and the right hand of God is in the articles of our faith taken for God's power and might, which is every where, they do wrong to the Scripture and unto the articles of our faith. They make a confusion of the Scripture, and leave nothing certain. They darken the simple and plain verity thereof with intolerable sophisms. They make heaven hell, and hell heaven, turn upside down and pervert the order of God. If the heaven and God's right hand, whither our Saviour's body is ascended, be every where, and noteth no certain place, as these uncertain men teach, I will believe no ascension. What needeth it?-seeing Christ's body is every where with his Godhead. I will interpret this article of my creed thus: Christus ascendit ad dextram Patris. Patris dextra est ubique: ergo Christus ascendit ad ubique. See what erroneous doctrine followeth their imaginations!' Early Writings of John Hooper, D.D., Lord Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester, Martyr, 1555; ed. by the Parker Society, Cambridge, 1843, p. 66. The Declaration of Christ and his Office,' from which this passage is taken, was first published at Zürich, 1547, in the early stage of the ubiquitarian controversy. See also the Remains of Archbishop Grindal, Camb. 1843, p. 46.

Comp, the eucharistic works of Pusey (1855), Philip Freeman (1862), Thomas L. Vogan (1871), and John Harrison (against Pusey, 1871).