THE LUTHERANS IN GERMANY

In his later years, having refused to walk in the advancing light, and so having less of the word of God and therefore less faith, even Luther swerved from the genuine Christian and Protestant principle, denied any right of toleration to the Zwinglians, and advocated the banishment of “false teachers” and the utter rooting out of the Jews from “Christian” lands. ^{7[Page 576] Schaff’s “History of the Christian Church, “Vol. xiv, section 11, par. 22, 23.} At Luther’s death many Protestants set themselves to maintain the doctrines stated by him, and steadily refused to take a single advance step. These thus became Lutherans rather than Protestants, and thus was formed the Lutheran Church. And though this church to this day holds the Augsburg Confession as one of its chief symbols; and though about the end of the seventeenth century “the Lutheran churches adopted the leading maxim of the Arminians, that Christians were accountable to God alone for their religious sentiments, and that no individual could be justly punished by the magistrate for his erroneous opinions, while he conducted himself like a virtuous and obedient subject, and made no attempts to disturb the peace and order of civil society” (Mosheim ^{8[Page 577] “Ecclesiastical History,” Century xvii, sec. ii, part ii, chap. 1, par. 16}); yet ever since the year 1817, the Lutheran Church has been a part of the Established Church of Prussia. And in the face of the declarations of the Augsburg Confession, the emperor of Germany to-day, as king of Prussia, is the supreme pontiff of the Lutheran Church in Prussia. In the Scandinavian countries also, the Lutheran Church is the State Church.TTR 576.3