American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics - Including a Reply to the Plea of Rev. W. J. Mann by S. S. (Samuel Simon) Schmucker
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page 23 of 200 (11%)
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fact itself is important in the discussion of the subject before us. As
the contrary has frequently been asserted in this country, in the face of history, it seems proper to advert to its details. The facts in the case are the following: _The Form of Concord_ was rejected in Denmark, Sweden, Hessia, Pommerania, Holstein, Anhalt, and the cities of Strasburg, Frankfurt a. m. Speier, Worms, Nuerenberg, Magdeburg, Bremen, Dantzig, &c. For particulars see Koellner's Symbolik, Vol. I, pp. 575-77. _The Smalcald Articles_ were rejected by Sweden and Denmark. _The Apology_ to the Augsburg Confession, was denied, official authority, by Sweden and Denmark. _The Larger Catechism_ of Luther, in Sweden and Denmark. Even _the Smaller Catechism_ of Luther was not received as symbolic in Sweden. 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_ |
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