CONSERVATIVE REFORMATION AND ITS THEOLOGY: AS REPRESENTED IN THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION, AND IN THE BY CHARLES P. KRAUTH, D.D., NORTON PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. LIPPINCOTT'S PRESS PHILADELPHIA. To the Memory OF CHARLES PHILIP KRAUTH, D.D., MY VENERATED AND SAINTED FATHER, THIS BOOK IS Dedicated. PREFACE. TH HAT some form of Christianity is to be the religion of the world, is not only an assured fact to the believer in Revelation, but must be regarded as probable, even in the judgment which is formed on purely natural evidence. Next in transcendent importance to that fact, and beyond it in present interest, as a question relatively undecided, is the question, What form of Christianity is to conquer the world? 'Shall it be the form in which Christianity now exists, the form of intermingling and of division, of internal separation and warfare? Is the territory of Christendom forever to be divided between antagonistic communions, or occupied by them conjointly? Shall there be to the end of time the Greek, the Roman, the Protestant churches, the sects, and the heretical bodies? Or shall one or other of these specific forms lift itself above the tangled mass, and impose order on chaos? Or shall a form yet unrevealed prove the church of the future? To this the answer seems to be, that the logic of the question, supported by eighteen centuries of history, renders it probable that some principle, or some combination of principles now existent, will assuredly, however slowly, determine the ultimate, world-dominating type of Christianity. Unless there be an exact balance of force in the different tendencies, the internally strongest of them will ultimately prevail over the others, and, unless a new force superior to it comes in, will be permanent. i The history of Christianity, in common with all genuine history, moves under the influence of two generic ideas: the conservative, which desires to secure the present by fidelity to the results of the past; the progressive, which looks out, in hope, to a better future. Reformation is the great harmonizer of the two principles. Corresponding with Conservatism, Reformation, and Progress are three generic types of Christianity; and under these genera all the species are but shades, modifications, or combinations, as all hues arise from three primary colors. Conservatism without Progress produces the Romish and Greek type |