#1 Art. IV “Justification” of the Apology of the Augsburg Confession.The adversaries condemn the doctrine taught in the forth, fifth, sixth, and twentieth articles of our Confession, that believers obtain the remission of their sins through Christ, by faith alone, without any merit of their own; and insolently reject these two tenets; first, that we deny that man can obtain remission of his sins through his own merit; and secondly, that we hold, teach, and confess that no one is reconciled to God, or obtains remission of his sins, but through faith in Christ alone.
Now, since this controversy concerns the principal and most important article of the whole Christian doctrine, and as much indeed depends upon this article, which contributes especially to a clear, correct apprehension of all the holy Scriptures, and which alone shows the way to the unspeakable treasure and the true knowledge of Christ; yea, which is the only key to the whole Bible, and without which the poor conscience can have no true, invariable, fixed hope, nor conceive the riches of the grace of Christ;—we therefore pray your Imperial Majesty, graciously to hear us concerning these great, momentous, and all-important subjects, as the nature of the case demands. For, as our adversaries do not understand or know, what is meant in the Scriptures by remission of sin, by faith, grace and righteousness, they have miserably defiled this noble, indispensable, and leading article, without which no one can know Christ; they have entirely suppressed the invaluable treasure of the knowledge of Christ, of his kingdom, and of his grace; and robbed our poor consciences of this noble and great treasure and of this eternal comfort, so valuable and important to them.
But in order to confirm our Confession, and to refute what our adversaries have adducted, we shall, in the first place, show the foundation and reasons upon which both doctrines rest, so that each may be more clearly understood. (This text is from The Henkel Translation of the Book of Concord, which is the only English translation based on the authoritative German Dresden Edition of 1580, p. 156-157).
