s,
and Moerlin was banished. He accepted a position as superintendent in
Brunswick, where he zealously continued his opposition to Osiandrism as
well as to other corruptions of genuine Lutheranism. At Koenigsberg the
Osiandrists continued to enjoy the protection and favor of Duke Albrecht
and gradually developed into a quasi-political party. The leader of the
small band was John Funck, the son-in-law of Osiander and the chaplain
of the Duke. In 1566, however, the king of Poland intervened, and Funck
was executed as a disturber of the public peace. Moerlin was recalled
and served as bishop of Samland at Koenigsberg from 1567 till his death
in 1571. The _Corpus Doctrinae Pruthenicum_, or _Borussicum_, framed by
Moerlin and Chemnitz and adopted 1567 at Koenigsberg, rejected the
doctrines of Osiander. Moerlin also wrote a history of Osiandrism
entitled: _Historia, welcher gestalt sich die Osiandrische Schwaermerei
im Lande zu Preussen erhaben_.

177. Corruptions Involved in Osiander's Teaching.

Osiander's theory of justification according to which the righteousness
of faith is the eternal, essential holiness of the divine nature of
Christ inhering and dwelling in man, consistently compelled him to
maintain that justification is not an act by which God declares a man
just, but an act by which He actually makes him inherently just and
righteous; that it is not an imputation of a righteousness existing
outside of man, but an actual infusion of a righteousness dwelling in
man; that it is not a mere acquittal from sin and guilt, but
regeneration, renewal, sanctification and internal, physical cleansing
from sin that it is not a forensic or judicial act outside of man or a
declaration concerning man's standing before God and his relation to
Him but a sort of medicinal process within man, that the righteousness
of faith is not the alien (strange, foreign) righteousness, _aliena
iustitia_ (a term employed also by Luther), consisting in the obedience
of Christ, but a quality, condition, or change effected in believers by
the essential righteousness of the divine nature dwelling in them
through faith in Christ; that faith does not justify on account of the
thing outside of man in which it trusts and upon which it relies, but
by reason of the thing which it introduces and produces in man; that,
accordingly, justification is never instantaneous and complete, but
gradual and progressive.

Osiander plainly teaches that the righteousn