cal view, the
splitting up of its general conceptions into a series of particular
dogmas, the tendency to express its beliefs as a hard and fast whole;
are defects which soon made Protestantism appear to disadvantage in
comparison with the wealth of Mediaeval theology and asceticism ... The
scholastic form of pure doctrine is really only the provisional, and not
the final form of Protestantism."]

[Footnote 4: It is very evident how the mediaeval and old catholic dogmas
were transformed in the view which Luther originally took of them. In
this view we must remember that he did away with all the presuppositions
of dogma, the infallible Apostolic Canon of Scripture, the infallible
teaching function of the Church, and the infallible Apostolic doctrine
and constitution. On this basis dogmas can only be utterances which do
not support faith, but are supported by it. But, on the other hand, his
opposition to all the Apocryphal saints which the Church had created,
compelled him to emphasise faith alone, and to give it a firm basis in
scripture, in order to free it from the burden of tradition. Here then,
very soon, first by Melanchthon, a summary of _articuli fidei_ was
substituted for the faith, and the scriptures recovered their place as a
rule. Luther himself, however, is responsible for both, and so it came
about that very soon the new evangelic standpoint was explained almost
exclusively by the "abolition of abuses", and by no means so surely by
the transformation of the whole doctrinal tradition. The classic
authority for this is the Augsburg confession ("haec fere summa est
doctrina apud suos, in qua cerni potest nihil inesse, quod discrepet a
scripturis vel ab ecclesia Catholica vel ab ecclesia Romana ... sed
dissensio est de quibusdam abusibus"). The purified catholic doctrine
has since then become the palladium of the Reformation Churches. The
refuters of the Augustana have justly been unwilling to admit the mere
"purifying," but have noted in addition that the Augustana does not say
everything that was urged by Luther and the Doctors (see Ficker, Die
Konfutation des Augsburgischen Bekenntnisse, 1891). At the same time,
however, the Lutheran Church, though not so strongly as the English,
retained the consciousness of being the true Catholics. But, as the
history of Protestantism proves, the original impulse has not remained
inoperative. Though Luther himself all his life measured his personal
Christian standing by an