On the other hand, the doctrine of justifica tion, while the central and ruling doctrine, is not the only doctrine of Lutheranism. Accord ing to our thesis, Christ would have the whole life of believers to be repentance. This, too, is a doctrinal statement. Repentance, peravota, is a change of heart and mind in man. In his natural fallen state man is wholly evil, spiritu ally dead in sin, unable to will or to do that which is spiritually good. He cannot, there fore, work his own restoration, nor contribute thereto. But God, prompted by His universal grace, and because of the merits of Christ, the redeemer of all mankind, through the gospel, the ever efficacious and ever irresistible means of grace, quickens the sinner into spiritual life, translating him, by the bestowal of faith, from a state of wrath and enmity against God into a state of grace and communion with God. This is the Lutheran doctrine of conversion or re generation in the stricter sense of the terms. In a wider sense, in which repentance also stands in our thesis, it includes the preservation and growth of spiritual life and its activity in works of the spirit, or sanctification. For while the Lutheran Church maintains that man's salva tion is in no sense, manner or measure, his own work, but wholly and solely the work of God, and hence denies the necessity of good works unto salvation, it strenuously asserts that good works are necessary fruits and evidence of faith.
There have been Syncretist (Unionists) within the pale of the Lutheran Church, who held that the real obstacles to mutual recognition between the Lutheran Church and others were only two — the doctrines of predestination and of the Lord's Sup per. But by these assertions Syncretism exhibits itself as thoroughly un-Lutheran in letter and spirit. These differences are in deed, while they stand, insurmountable barriers between the conflicting theologies. But the chasm which separates them is far deeper and wider, a difference of the very fundamental principles which affects a multitude of particu lar doctrines. The formal principle of Luther anism is, as we have seen, that of the exclusive authority and absolute sufficiency of the canon ical Scriptures in matters of faith. The mate rial principle of Lutheranism is the scriptural doctrine of justification. Lutheranism holds that Christ, the only head and foundation of the Church, vested all the rights and powers of the Church, the keys of heaven, the power of re mitting and retaining sins in His name as His agent, the government and discipline of the Church, in the local congregation of believers. Lutheranism maintains that Christ, the only mediator between God and man, has instituted an office in the Church, the ministry of the word, for the public administration of the means of grace, that this office is conferred on its incumbent by Christ's authority through the call of the congregation, and has no power hut the power of the word as set forth in the Scrip tures, all ministers being equal in rank among themselves. Lutheranism looks upon the Lord's
Supper as a means of grace, whereby Christ, by virtue of His words of institution pronounced in the night in which He was betrayed, gives to all communicants His body and blood, really pres ent, not by transubstantiation or the change into another substance, nor by consubstantiation or the formation of a new substance, hut by sacramental union, to be eaten and drunk in, with and under the consecrated bread and wine, for an assurance of the forgiveness of our sins, procured by, His sacrifice on Calvary.
Lutheranism also holds and teaches a doc trine of predestination, not, however, a decree of damnation, but only an election and predes tination of the children of God to eternal sal vation by faith in Christ Jesus, who is the re deemer not only of the elect, but of all man kind, and by whom the decree of election is determined as by its meritorious cause, and not as an accessory means of execution. Thus, likewise, the gospel and the sacraments, accord ing to the Lutheran concept, are the ordained means, whereby the same universal grace, ac cording to which God earnestly desires the sal vation of all men, and, by the power of His Spirit in all cases 'efficaciously, but in no case irresistibly, exerted through such means of grace, calls, converts or regenerates, sanctifies and preserves to eternal life all those who do not wilfully and obstinately resist the saving grace of God.
Having thus briefly portrayed the nature and principles of Lutheranism, we proceed to a sum mary sketch of its rise and progress and its spread in the era of the Reformation.
The cradle of Lutheranism was Saxony in Germany. Here, at Wittenberg, the great Re former taught and preached and wrote under the protection of the Elector Frederick the Wise, and hand in hand with his successors john and John Frederick. The effects of his 95 theses far exceeded the expectations of their author. When Luther published this manifesto, he had no thought of the establishment of a new church. The very name of Lutherans was not adopted by the free choice of those who bore it, but was solemnly inflicted upon them in a bull published by Pope Leo X 3 Jan. 1521. By this bull Luther and his adherents were ex communicated from the Roman Catholic Church, and when Luther had refused to recant at the Diet at Worms, April 1521, he and the Lutherans were also politically outlawed by an imperial edict, which exposed them to persecu tion and the death of confirmed heretics. The execution of this edict was suspended in Ger many because of the great headway which the Lutheran movement had by this time made, and for various political reasons, which bound the emperor's hands, and at the Diet at Spires, in 1526, the German princes and representatives formally agreed that everyone should so conduct himself toward the Edict of Worms as he would deem himself able to answer before God and His Imperial Majesty.