The Lutheran Church acknowledges the three ecumenical creeds (the Apostles', the Nicene, and the Athanasian), which it holds in common with other orthodox churches, and, besides, six specific confessions which separate it from other churches. These are: (1) The Augsburg Confes sion (see Augsburg Confession and Its Apology), drawn up by Melanchthon and presented to the Augsburg Diet in 1530, afterward altered by the author in the tenth article, on the Lord's Supper, 1540. This is the fundamental and most widely accepted confession of this church; some branches accept no other as binding. (2) The Apology of the Augsburg Confession, also by Melanchthon (1530). (3) and (4) Two catechisms of Luther (1529), a Larger and a Smaller (see Catechisms; Luther's Two Catechisms); the latter, for children and catechumens, is, next to Luther's German Version of the Bible (see Bible Versions, B, VII., § 3), his most useful and best-known work. (5) The Schmalkald Articles (q.v.) by Luther (1529; strongly antipapal). (6) The Formula of Concord (q.v.), prepared by six Lutheran divines for the settlement of the Melanchthonian or synergistic controversy (see Synergism), the CryptoCalvinistic controversy (see Philippists), and other doctrinal disputes which agitated the Lutheran Church after the death of Luther and Melanchthon. These nine symbolical books, including the three ecumenical creeds, were officially published by order of Elector Augustus of Saxony, in Latin and German, under the title Concordia (Leipsic and Dresden, 1580; best editions, outside the editio princeps, by J. G. Walch, Jena, 1750, and J. F. Müller, 6th ed., 1886; best 'Eng. transl. by H. E. Jacobs, The Book of Concord, Philadelphia, 1893).
Two tendencies have always been in evidence in the Lutheran Church in its relation to the Reformed or Calvinistic Churches-one rigid and exclusive, which is represented by the Formula. of Concord, the Lutheran scholastics of the seventeenth cen- tury, and the "New Lutheran" school in Germany; the other moderate and conciliatory, represented by the altered Augsburg Confession of 1540, by Melanchthon in his later period after the death of Luther, Calixtus, John Arndt, Spener, Francke, Mosheim, the Swabian Lutherans, and those moderate Lutheran divines who sympathize with the Union and regard the differences between the two confessions as unessential and insufficient to justify separation and exclusion from communion at the Lord's table. The Lutheran Church is, next to the Church of England, the most conservative of the Protestant denominations, and retains many usages and ceremonies of the Middle Ages which the more radical zeal of Zwingli, Calvin, and Knox threw overboard as unscriptural corruptions. The strict Lutheran creed differs from the Reformed or Calvinistic in four points (as detailed in the semi-symbolical Saxon Visitation Articles of 1592), viz.: (1) Baptismal regeneration, and the ordinary necessity of baptism for salvation. (2) The real presence of Christ's body and blood "in, with, and under" the bread and wine during the sacramental fruition, usually called by English writers Consubstantiation (q.v.), in distinction from the Roman Catholic Transubstantiation (q.v.); but the term is not used in the Lutheran symbols and is rejected by the Lutheran divines, as well as the term "Impanation" (q.v.). Body and blood are not mixed with nor locally included in, but sacramentally and mysteriously united with, the elements. (3) The Communicatio Ideomatum (q.v.) in the doctrine of Christ's person, whereby the attributes of the divine nature are attributed to his human nature, so that Ubiquity (q.v.), or conditional omnipresence, is ascribed to the body of Christ, enabling it to be really and truly, though not locally and carnally, present wherever the communion is celebrated. (4) The universal vocation of all men to salvation, with the possibility of a total and final fall from grace; yet the Formula of Concord teaches at the same time (with Luther, De servo orbitrio) the total depravity and slavery of the human will, and an unconditional predestination of the elect to everlasting life. It is therefore a great mistake to identify the Lutheran system with the later Arminian theory. Melanchthon'a synergism may be said to have anticipated Arminianism, but it was condemned by the Formula of Concord.
The foundation of the ritual of the Lutheran Church was laid in Luther's work Von ordenung gottea dienat ynn der genuytte
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