The Presentation of the Augsburg Confession

Tim the Enchanter and the Mrs. popped open a bottle of Michigan wine tonight with Brave Sir Robin in honor of those faithful, intrepid German laymen who confessed the holy catholic faith before the Charles V in Augsburg 482 years ago today.

Here are some words on my mind tonight, some from a Roman Catholic saint and others from the first president of our church body:

"Since I have been papal legate and have had an opportunity to compare the religious condition of the catholics in Poland with that of the Protestants in Germany, I have become convinced that the apostasy from the church happened because the German people required, and still do require, genuine piety. The Reformation was spread and kept alive, not by heretics and philosophers, but by men and women who actually yearned for a religion which reached their hearts. I told this to the pope and cardinalas in Rome, but they did not believe me; they still hold firmly to the belief that hostility toward religion is what caused the Reformation."

Clemens Maria Hofbauer, 1816

"It is true that of all the church bodies which have left the papacy, it is precisely the Lutheran Church which is accused of retaining many papal abuses and of having been the least successful in cleansing itself. It is pointed out, for example, that in our church priestly clothing, church ornamentation, pictures, altar, crucifixes, candles, confession, the sign of the cross, and the like are still apparent. But, my friends, whoever regards these innocent things as vestiges of the papacy knows neither what the papacy is, nor what the Bible teaches. The very fact that the Lutheran Reformation was not aimed at indifferent adiaphora, but retained those things which were in harmony with God’s Word, shows that it was not a disorderly revolution, but a Biblical reformation."

C. F. W. Walther