The purpose of the first eleven articles of the _Formula of Concord_ was
not only to establish peace within the Lutheran Church and to ward off
future controversies, but also to meet the ridicule and obloquy of the
Papists and to brand before the whole world as slander, pure and simple,
their assertions that the Lutherans were hopelessly disagreed and had
abandoned the _Augsburg Confession_, and that the Reformation was bound
to end in utter confusion and dissolution. The _Formula of Concord_ was
to leave no doubt regarding the fact that the Lutheran Church offers a
united front in every direction: against the Romanists, the Calvinists,
the errorists that had arisen in their own midst, and self-evidently
also against the sects and fanatics, old and modern, with whom the
Romanists slanderously identified them.
Summarizing the errors which Lutherans repudiate, the _Formula of
Concord_ declares: "First, we reject and condemn all heresies and errors
which were rejected and condemned in the primitive, ancient, orthodox
Church, upon the true, firm ground of the holy divine Scriptures.
Secondly, we reject and condemn all sects and heresies which are
rejected in the writings, just mentioned, of the comprehensive summary
of the confession of our churches [the Lutheran symbols, preceding the
_Formula of Concord_]. Thirdly, we reject also all those errors which
caused dissension within the Lutheran Church, and which are dealt with
and refuted in the first eleven articles of the _Formula of Concord_."
(857, 17ff.) Among the errors rejected in the _Augsburg Confession_ and
the subsequent Lutheran symbols were those also of the Anabaptists,
Antitrinitarians, and others. (CONC. TRIGL. 42, 6; 44, 4; 46, 3; 48, 7;
50, 3. 4; 138, 66; 244, 52; 310, 13; 356, 43; 436, 49; 744, 55; 746,
58.) And this is the class of errorists which Article XII of the
_Formula of Concord_ makes it a special point to characterize summarily
and reject by name. Before this the _Book of Confutation_, composed 1559
by the theologians of Duke John Frederick, had enumerated and rejected
the doctrines of such errorists as Servetus, Schwenckfeld, and the
Anabaptists.
From the very beginning of the Reformation, and especially at Augsburg,
1530, Eck and other Romanists had either identified the Lutherans with
the Anabaptists and other sects, or had, at least, held them responsible
for their origin and growth. Both charges are denied by the _Formula of
Concord_. For here we read: "However, lest there be silently ascribed to
us the condemned errors of the above enumerated factions and sects
(which, as is the nature of such spirits, for the most part, secretly
stole in at localities, and especially at a time when no place or room
was given to the pure word of the holy Gospel, but all its sincere
teachers and confessors were persecuted, and the deep darkness of the
Papacy still prevailed and poor simple men who could not help but feel
the manifest idolatry and false faith of the Papacy, in their
simplicity, alas! embraced whatever was called Gospel, and was not
papistic), we could not forbear testifying also against them publicly,
before all Christendom, that we have neither part nor fellowship with
their errors, be they many or few, but reject and condemn them, one and
all, as wrong and heretical, and contrary to the Scriptures of the
prophets and apostles, and to our Christian _Augsburg Confession_, well
grounded in God's Word." (1097, 7f.)