s for their Lutheran
opponents, it cannot be denied that some of their statements were not
always sufficiently guarded to preclude all misapprehensions and false
inferences.

Thus controversial material had been everywhere heaped up in
considerable quantities. Considering these factors, which for decades
had been making for a theological storm, one may feel rather surprised
that a controversy on predestination had not arisen long ago. Tschackert
says: "They [the Lutheran theologians] evidently feared an endless
debate if the intricate question concerning predestination were made a
subject of discussion." (559.) Sooner or later, however, the conflict
was bound to come with dire results for the Church, unless provisions
were made to escape it, or to meet it in the proper way. Well aware of
this entire critical situation and the imminent dangers lurking therein,
the framers of the _Formula of Concord_ wisely resolved to embody in it
also an article on election in order to clear the theological
atmosphere, maintain the divine truth, ward off a future controversy,
and insure the peace of our Church.

223. Unguarded Statements of Anti-Synergists.

That the occasional dissimilar and inadequate references to eternal
election and related subjects made by some opponents of the Synergists
were a matter of grave concern to the authors of the _Formula of
Concord_ appears from the passage quoted from Article XI, enumerating,
among the reasons why the article on predestination was embodied in the
_Formula_, also the fact that "the same expressions were not always
employed concerning it [eternal election] by the theologians." These
theologians had staunchly defended the _sola gratia_ doctrine, but not
always without some stumbling in their language. In their expositions
they had occasionally employed phrases which, especially when torn from
their context, admitted a synergistic or Calvinistic interpretation.
The framers of the _Formula_ probably had in mind such inadequate and
unguarded statements of Bucer, Amsdorf, and others as the following.

Bucer had written: "The Scriptures do not hesitate to say that God
delivers some men into a reprobate mind and drives them to perdition.
Why, then, is it improper to say that God has afore-determined to
deliver these into a reprobate mind and to drive them to perdition?
_Scriptura non veretur dicere, Deum tradere quosdam homines in sensum
reprobum et agere in perniciem. Quid igitur indignum