The Melanchthonian Blight

Luther\u27s 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 the ravages of the Thirty Years\u27 War, in subsequent centuries embark on intellectual and political programs which have little relation to the heart of Luther, and in our time undergo a collapse against which the nominal Lutheranism of their nation offered little resistance