om God by means of which He
instructs us concerning His will." (Frank 2, 312.) While Zwingli thus
practically identified Law and Gospel, Luther, throughout his life, held
that the difference between both is as great as that between life and
death or the merits of Christ and our own sinful works; and that no one
can be a true minister of the Christian Church who is unable properly to
distinguish and apply them. For, according to Luther, a commingling of
the Law and the Gospel necessarily leads to a corruption of the doctrine
of justification, the very heart of Christianity. And as both must be
carefully distinguished, so both must also be upheld and preached in the
Church; for the Gospel presupposes the Law and is rendered meaningless
without it. Wherever the Law is despised, disparaged, and corrupted, the
Gospel, too, cannot be kept intact. Whenever the Law is assailed, even
if this be done in the name of the Gospel, the latter is, in reality,
hit harder than the former. The cocoon of antinomianism always bursts
into antigospelism.

Majorism, the mingling of sanctification and justification, and
synergism, the mingling of nature and grace, were but veiled efforts to
open once more the doors of the Lutheran Church to the Roman
work-righteousness, which Luther had expelled. The same is true of
antinomianism in all its forms. It amounts to nothing less than apostasy
from true Evangelicalism and a return to Romanism. When Luther opposed
Agricola, the father of the Antinomians in the days of the Reformation,
he did so with the clear knowledge that the Gospel of Jesus Christ with
its doctrine of justification by grace and faith alone was at stake and
in need of defense. "By these spirits," said he, "the devil does not
intend to rob us of the Law, but of Christ, who fulfilled the Law." (St.
L. 20, 1614; Pieper, _Dogm_. 3, 279; Frank 2, 268. 325.)

With the same interest in view, to save the Gospel from corruption, the
_Formula of Concord_ opposes antinomianism and urges that the
distinction between the Law and the Gospel be carefully preserved. The
opening paragraph of Article V, "Of the Law and the Gospel," reads: "As
the distinction between the Law and Gospel _is a special brilliant
light_ which serves to the end that God's Word may be rightly divided,
and the Scriptures of the holy prophets and apostles may be properly
explained and understood, we must guard it with especial care, in order
that these two doctrines may not