of God. And the only reason why
the promoters and framers of the _Formula_ were determined to restore
the unadulterated teaching of Luther was because, in the controversies
following his death, they had thoroughly convinced themselves that, on
the one hand, the doctrines proclaimed by Luther were nothing but the
purest gold mined from the shafts of God's Word, and that, on the other
hand, the various deviations from Luther's teaching, which had caused
the dissensions, were aberrations not only from the original Lutheran
Confessions, but also from Holy Scripture. The thirty years of
theological discussion had satisfied the Lutherans that to adhere to the
Bible was tantamount to adhering to the teaching of Luther, and _vice
versa_. Accordingly, the _Formula_ also declared it as its object to
prove that the doctrines it presented were in harmony with the Bible, as
well as with the teaching of Luther and the _Augsburg Confession_. (856,
19.) This agreement with the Word of God and the preceding Lutheran
symbols constitutes the _Formula_ a Lutheran confession, which no one
who is a true Lutheran can reject or, for doctrinal reasons, refuse to
accept.

288. Formula Benefited Lutheran Church.

It has frequently been asserted that the _Formula of Concord_ greatly
damaged Lutheranism, causing bitter controversies, and driving many
Lutherans into the fold of Calvinism, _e.g._, in the Palatinate (1583),
in Anhalt, in Hesse, and in Brandenburg (1613). Richard says: "The
_Formula of Concord_ was the cause of the most bitter controversies,
dissensions, and alienations. The position taken by the adherents of the
_Formula of Concord_ that this document is the true historical and
logical explanation of the older confessions and is therefore the test
and touchstone of Lutheranism, had the effect, as one extreme generates
a counter-extreme, of driving many individual Lutherans and many
Lutheran churches into the Calvinistic fold, as that fold was
represented in Germany by the Heidelberg Catechism as the chief
confession of faith." (516.)

But this entire view is founded on indifferentism and unionism flowing
from the false principle that quality must be sacrificed to quantity,
eternal truth to temporal peace and unity to external progress and
temporary success. Viewed in the light of God's Word, error is the
centrifugal force and the real cause of dissension and separations among
Christians, while divine truth always acts as a centripe