. Voluntarily the articles were subscribed at Smalcald.
On their own merits they won their place of honor in our Church. In the
situation then obtaining, they voiced the Lutheran position in a manner
so correct and consistent that every loyal Lutheran spontaneously gave
and declared his assent. In keeping with the changed historical context
of the times, they offered a correct explanation of the Augsburg
Confession, adding thereto a declaration concerning the Papacy, the
absence of which had become increasingly painful. They struck the
timely, logical, Lutheran note also over against the Zwinglian and
Bucerian [Reformed and Unionistic] tendencies. Luther's articles offered
quarters neither for disguised Papists nor for masked Calvinists. In
brief they gave such a clear expression to genuine Lutheranism that
false spirits could not remain in their company. It was the recognition
of these facts which immediately elicited the joyful acclaim of all true
Lutherans. To them it was a recommendation of Luther's articles when
Bucer, Blaurer, and others, though having subscribed the Augsburg
Confession, refused to sign them. Loyal Lutherans everywhere felt that
the Smalcald Articles presented an up-to-date touchstone of the pure
Lutheran truth, and that, in taking their stand on them, their feet were
planted, over against the aberrations of the Romanists as well as the
Zwinglians, on ground immovable.

In the course of time, the esteem in which Luther's articles were held,
rose higher and higher. Especially during and after the controversies on
the Interim, as well as in the subsequent controversies with the
Crypto-Calvinists, the Lutherans became more and more convinced that the
Smalcald Articles and not the Variata, contained the correct exposition
of the Augsburg Confession. At the Diet of Regensburg, in 1541, the
Elector, by his delegates, sent word to Melanchthon "to stand by the
Confession and the Smalcald Agreement [Smalcald Articles] in word and in
sense." The delegates answered that Philip would not yield anything
"which was opposed to the Confession and the Smalcald Agreement," as he
had declared that "he would die rather than yield anything against his
conscience." (_C. R._ 4, 292.) In an opinion of 1544 also the
theologians of Hesse, who at Smalcald had helped to sidetrack Luther's
articles put them on a par with the Augustana. At Naumburg in 1561,
where Elector Frederick of the Palatinate and the Crypto-Calvinists
en