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The Melanchthonian Blight, Richard Craemerer

Concordia Theological Monthly

Luther's Reformation was a movement of truly spiritual vitality. He restored to light some of the most powerful impulses of the Christian religion - salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, the royal priesthood of all believers, the divinity of the Christian calling. Somewhere around 1525, however, this vitality seems to wane. The German princes begin to dominate in the Lutheran movement, and they retain most of the pagan characteristics of their contemporaries. Theologians expend their best efforts in many decades of acrimonious controversy. The German people lag behind their neighbors in cultural and political progress, almost succumb to …