#7-The Doctrine of Our Christian Religion—Clearly Unfolded and Purified

“A Full Declaration:  A complete, clear, correct, and final repetition and declaration of certain articles of the Augsburg Confession, concerning which, for some time, disputes had been maintained among some theologians attached to that confession; in which these disputes are determined and reconciled according to the authority of the Word of God, and to the summary contents of our Christian doctrine.

PREFACE.  By the inestimable goodness and mercy of Almighty God, the doctrine concerning the principal articles of our Christian religion, which had been shamefully obscured during the Papacy by the opinions and traditions of men, has now again been clearly unfolded and purified, according to the rule and analogy of the Word of God, by the labors of Dr. Luther, of blessed memory, while Papistical errors, abuses, and idolatry have been seriously rebuked. By this pious reformation, our adversaries supposed that new doctrines were introduced into the church of God; and as if this reformation were repugnant to the Word of God, and entirely subversive of all pious institutions, they assailed it with violence, but without truth, and loaded it with almost infinite calumnies, on grounds which were not even plausible. Influenced by this consideration, those electors, princes, and estates of the empire, who were distinguished by their piety, and who had at that time embraced the pure doctrine of the Gospel, and had reformed their own churches according to the rule of the Word of God, at the numerous and celebrated Diet of Augsburg, held A. D. 1530, carefully provided that a pious Confession, derived from the holy Scriptures, should be drawn up in writing; and they exhibited that confession to the emperor Charles V” (Formula of Concord, Full Declaration, Preface, Henkel p.593).

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