Augsburg Confession, the chief standard of faith in the Lutheran Church. With a view to an amicable arrangement of the religious split that had existed in Germany since 1517, Charles V., as protector of the church, had convoked a diet of the empire, to meet at Augsburg, 8th April 1530, and had required from the Protestants a short statement of the doctrines in which they departed from the Catholic Church. In March, therefore, the Elector, John of Saxony, called on his Wittenberg theologians, with Luther at their head, to draw up articles of faith, to lay before him at Torgau. The commissioned doctors took as a basis, in so far as pure doctrine was concerned, articles that had been agreed to the previous year at conferences held at Marburg and Schwabach, in the form of resolutions of the Lutheran reformers of Germany against the doctrines of Zwingli. These doctrinal articles, supplemented, and with a practical part newly added, were laid before the
Elector at Torgau. Melanchthon then, taking as a foundation the Torgau articles, began at Augsburg in May, and, with the advice of various Protestant theologians, as well as princes and other secular authorities, composed the document which he first called an Apology, but which in the diet itself took the name of the Augsburg Confession. Luther was not present in Augsburg, being then under the ban of the empire, but his advice was had recourse to in its composition. The Torgau articles were in German; the Confession was both in German and Latin; and Melanchthon laboured incessantly at its improvement till it was presented to the emperor, June 25. In composing the document, Melanchthon sought to maintain a spirit of forbearance and conciliation, as well as to secure the utmost brevity and simplicity. The aim of the Confession was to give a collected view of the belief of the Lutheran Protestants, to lay a foundation for measures of reconciliation. The Protestant doctrines were stated in a form as near that of the Catholic views as possible, and their agreement with the church fathers carefully emphasised.
The first part of the Confession contains twenty-one articles of faith and doctrine: 1. Of God; 2. Of Original Sin; 3. Of the Son of God; 4. Of Justification; 5. Of Preaching; 6. Of New Obedience; 7 and 8. Of the Church; 9. Of Baptism; 10. Of the Lord's Supper; 11. Of Confession; 12. Of Penance; 13. Of the Use of Sacraments; 14. Of Church Government; 15. Of Church Order; 16. Of Secular Government; 17. Of Christ's Second Coming to Judgment; 18. Of Free Will; 19. Of the Cause of Sin; 20. Of Faith and Good Works; 21. Of the Worship of Saints. The second and more practical part, which is carried out at greater length, contains seven articles on disputed points: 22. On the Sacrament in Two Kinds; 23. Of the Marriage of Priests; 24. Of the Mass; 25. Of Confession; 26. Of Distinctions of Meat; 27. Of Conventual Vows; 28. Of the Authority of Bishops.
This document, signed by seven Protestant princes and two free cities, was read before the emperor and the diet, 25th June 1530. Melanchthon, not looking upon the Confession as binding, began shortly after to make some alterations in its expression; at last, in 1540, he published a Latin edition (Confessio Variata) in which there were important changes and additions. This was especially the case with the article on the Lord's Supper, in which, with a view to conciliation, he endeavoured to unite the views of the Lutherans and Calvinists. This gave rise subsequently to much controversy; orthodox Lutheranism repudiated the alterations of Melanchthon, and long continued to subject his memory to great abuse; though it is clear that Melanchthon and his adherents contemplated no substantial departure in doctrine from the original Confession. It is not certain that the form of the Confession found in the Lutheran standards is identical with the unaltered Augsburg Confession, as the two original documents—German and Latin—laid before the diet have been lost. The chief distinction between the orthodox Lutherans and the reformed churches of Germany has all along been adherence to the 'unaltered' or to the 'altered' Confession. It was even a matter of controversy whether the 'reformed' were entitled to the rights secured to the Protestants by the Religious Peace of Augsburg, concluded in 1555, on the ground of the 'unaltered' Confession.—Though the Augsburg Confession is still formally adhered to by the Protestant churches of Germany, it is confessedly no longer the expression of the belief of the vast majority of the members, after the great advances made by theology, and the many alterations in public opinion and feeling.