Note 1088 — Chapter XVIII

Cp. Kolde, ibid., p. xxiv. ff. K. Müller, “Die Symbole des Luthertums” (“Preuss. Jahrb.,” 63, 1889, p. 121 ff.), points out why Luther looked askance at any Symbolic Books; the fact is he did not recognise any Church having “a legal and ordered constitution and laws such as would call for Symbolic Books.” G. Krüger says (“Philipp Melanchthon,” 1906, p. 18 f.): “The Confession and its Apology were wrongly interpreted by the narrow-minded orthodoxy of later years as laws binding on faith. And yet why did Melanchthon go on improving and polishing them if he did not regard them as his own personal books, which he was free to alter just as every author may when he publishes a new edition of his work?” Yet they were “the genuine charter of evangelical belief as understood by our Reformers.”