the Crypto-Calvinistic Controversy, from 1560 to 1574,
in which the Philippists in Wittenberg, Leipzig, and Dresden (Peucer,
Cracow, Stoessel, etc.) endeavored gradually to supplant Luther's
doctrines concerning the Lord's Supper and the majesty of the human
nature of Christ by the Calvinistic teachings on these points. These
secret and dishonest enemies of Lutheranism were opposed by true
Lutherans everywhere, notably by the theologians of Ducal Saxony. In
1574 they were publicly unmasked as deceivers and Calvinistic schemers.
The controversy was settled by Articles VII and VIII.

The two last controversies were of a local nature. The first was chiefly
confined to Hamburg, the second to Strassburg. In the former city John
Aepinus taught that Christ's descent into hell was a part of His
suffering and humiliation. He was opposed by his colleagues in Hamburg.
In Strassburg John Marbach publicly denounced Zanchi, a
Crypto-Calvinist, for teaching that faith, once engendered in a man,
cannot be lost. The questions involved in these two articles are dealt
with in Articles IX and XI, respectively.

132. Conflicts Unavoidable.

When describing the conflicts after Luther's death, historians
frequently deplore "the dreadful controversies of these dark days of
doctrinal extremists and the polemical spirit of rigid Lutheranism." G.
J. Planck, in particular, characterized them all as useless quarrels and
personal wranglings of narrow-minded, bigoted adherents of Luther, who
vitiated original Lutheranism by making it essentially a matter of "pure
doctrine." To the present day indifferentistically inclined historians
are wont to mar their pages with similar views.

True, "pure doctrine," "unity in the pure doctrine of the Gospel," such
was the shibboleth of the faithful Lutherans over against the
Melanchthonians and other errorists. But this was neither reprehensible
doctrinalism nor a corruption of original Lutheranism, but the very
principle from which it was born and for which Luther contended
throughout his life--a principle of life or death for the Lutheran
Church. It was the _false_ doctrine of justification which made Luther a
most miserable man. It was the _pure_ doctrine as taught by St. Paul
which freed his conscience, transported him into Paradise, as he himself
puts it, and made him the Reformer of the Church. Ever since, purity of
doctrine was held, by Luther and all true Lutheran theologians, to be of
paramount impor