the author sufficed to procure for them the
widest circulation and the most extensive use. Everywhere the doors of
churches, schools, and homes were opened to the writings of Luther.

The tables had hardly been published when catechism instruction already
generally was given according to Luther's Explanation. The church
regulations, first in Saxony, then also in other lands, provided that
Luther's Small Catechism be memorized word for word, and that preaching
be according to the Large Catechism. The Church Order of Henry the
Pious, 1539, declares: "There shall not be taught a different catechism
in every locality, but one and the same form, as presented by Dr. Martin
Luther at Wittenberg, shall be observed everywhere." In 1533 the
ministers of Allstaedt were ordered "to preach according to Luther's
Large Catechism." (Kolde, 63.) The authority of the Catechisms grew
during the controversies after Luther's death, when the faithful
Lutherans appealed to the Smalcald Articles and especially to Luther's
Catechisms. The Lueneburg Articles of 1561 designate them, together with
the Smalcald Articles, as the correct "explication and explanation" of
the true sense of the Augustana. The _Corpus Doctrinae Pomeranicum_ of
1564 declares that "the sum of Christian and evangelical doctrine is
purely and correctly contained in Luther's Catechisms." Their authority
as a genuinely Lutheran norm of doctrine increased when the Reformed of
Germany, in 1563, made the Heidelberg Catechism their particular
confession.

Like the Smalcald Articles, Luther's Catechisms achieved their
symbolical authority by themselves, without resolutions of princes
estates, and theologians. The Thorough Declaration of the Formula of
Concord is merely chronicling actual facts when it adopts the Catechisms
for this reason: "because they have been unanimously approved and
received by all churches adhering to the Augsburg Confession, and have
been publicly used in churches, schools, and homes, and, moreover,
because the Christian doctrine from God's Word is comprised in them in
the most correct and simple way, and, in like manner, is explained, as
far as necessary for simple laymen." (852, 8.) The Epitome adds: "And
because such matters concern also the laity and the salvation of their
souls, we also confess the Small and Large Catechisms of Dr. Luther as
they are included in Luther's works, as the Bible of the laity, wherein
everything is comprised which is treate