See Guericke's Symbolik, pp. 67, &c., 113.
Here, then, we perceive, that those ultra Lutherans of our day, who
insist on the whole mass of former symbols as essential to Lutheranism,
must unchurch a very large portion of the Lutheran Church even of the
sixteenth century. But among these we can by no means class the author
of the Plea, who is evidently a Lutheran of the more enlightened and
liberal class.
The author of the Plea represents "the Augsburg Confession, as the
_unexceptionable_ password of the adherents of the Lutheran Church for
three centuries." The idea designed probably is, that the _great mass_
of doctrines taught in this confession has been thus received. For it
is a historical fact, that cannot be contested, that private confession,
which is enjoined in the eleventh, twenty-fifth and twenty-eighth
Articles of the Augsburg Confession, and was retained by Luther,
Melancthon and their churches, was from the begining [sic] rejected by
the _entire Lutheran Church in Sweden and Denmark_, as well as other
places, and a public confession of the whole church, such as is now
employed in Germany and this country, introduced in its stead. See
Siegel's Handbuch, Vol. I., p. 200.
"Of course the accusation against the Augsburg Confession, involves an
exhibition of Luther and Melancthon, those pillars of the Reformation,
as teaching _heretical doctrines_, which are not in accordance with the
word of God.
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