tal or a truly
unifying power. The _Formula_ therefore, standing clearly as it does for
divine truth only, cannot be charged with causing dissension and
breeding trouble among Christians. It settled many controversies and
healed dissensions, but produced none. True, the _Formula_ was condemned
by many, but with no greater justice and for no other reasons than those
for which the truths of God's Word have always been assailed by their
enemies.

Nor is the statement correct that the _Formula of Concord_ drove loyal
Lutherans out of their own churches into Calvinistic folds. It clearly
stated what, according to God's Word and their old confessions,
Lutherans always will believe, teach, and confess, as also what they
always must reject as false and detrimental to the cause of the Church
of Christ; however, in so doing, it did not drive Lutherans into the
ranks of the Calvinists, but drove masked Calvinists out of the ranks of
loyal Lutherans into those folds to which they really belonged. Indeed,
the _Formula_ failed to make true Lutherans of all the errorists; but
neither did the _Augsburg Confession_ succeed in making friends and
Lutherans of all Papists, nor the Bible, in making Christians of all
unbelievers. However, by clearly stating its position in thesis and
antithesis, the _Formula_ did succeed in bringing about a wholesome
separation, ridding the Lutheran Church of antagonistic spirits, unsound
tendencies, and false doctrines. In fact, it saved the Church from slow,
but sure poisoning at the hands of the Crypto-Calvinists; it restored
purity, unity, morale, courage, and hope when she was demoralized,
distracted, and disfigured by many dissensions and corruptions.
Whatever, by adopting the _Formula of Concord_ the Lutheran Church
therefore may have lost in extension, it won in intention; what it lost
in numbers, it won in unity, solidity, and firmness in the truth.

True, the _Formula of Concord_ completely foiled Melanchthon's plan of a
union between the Lutheran and Reformed churches on the basis of the
Variata of 1540,--a fact which more than anything else roused the ire of
Philippists and Calvinists. But that was an ungodly union, contrary to
the Word of God; a union involving a denial of essential Christian
truths; a union incompatible with the spirit of Lutheranism, which
cannot survive where faith is gagged and open confession of the truth is
smothered; a union in which Calvinism, engrafted on Lutheranism,