§.VI: Melanchthon's more polished Variata while Luther lived; repeats in 1540–42 and 1551; later public approval
§. VI. In the years that followed, many other printed copies of the Augsburg Confession came after the first.
Then in 1537 and 1538 — Luther and the other original exhibitors still alive — Melanchthon, seeing how the many copies varied, took counsel to issue a more polished and corrected edition, and carried it out with no one contradicting.
Many theologians at the Altenburg colloquy (p. 404) thus prove the very point Calov says no document establishes (Critica, p. 202). See also the author of the Ausführliche Behauptung, pp. 27–28.
Melanchthon undertook the same again in 1540 and 1542.
In 1551, by order of many Protestant Estates, he finished a third and somewhat longer repeat, to be read in his Body of Doctrine — a useful writing worth reading, says Johannes Museus, in which Augsburg doctrine is set out clearly and with elegance (Lectures on the Epitome of the Formula of Concord, p. 35).
The earlier two Melanchthon editions lacked a public approval beforehand; they still won approval afterward.
Other theologians owned them — Chytraeus, Selneccer, Brenz, the Altenburg men, among them Paul Eber, the Meissen and Greifswald faculties — and Luther himself (Jena German Tom. 7, fol. 447 with 448b).
So did the imperial Estates in the diets at Worms, Regensburg, Frankfurt, and Naumburg, declaring in these words:
Nor is it our mind, by this repetition and renewed subscription of the Confession first printed, to depart even in the least from that shown in the year 40.
For in some colloquies and disputations with adversaries that later text was explained more fully in certain articles, so that heavenly truth might shine the more, and trust in the merit of our Redeemer Jesus Christ might be kept pure and uncorrupted without human traditions and handed on to posterity.
We cannot desert that enriched Confession any more than the other — especially since the 1540 and 1542 print now sits in many hands and is largely in use in our churches and schools.
Latin
§. VI. Typis exscripta Augustanae Confessionis Exemplaria succedentibus annis plura alia insecuta sunt, donec Melanchthon Anno 37. & 38. vivo adhuc Luthero aliisque Augustanae Confessionis exhibitoribus, cum varietatem exemplorum plurium observasset, de edenda expolitiori & correctiori consilium & cepit, & nemine contradicente executus est, quod e pluribus Theologi in colloquio Altenburgico pag. 404, probaturi hoc pacto istud, quod Calovius nullo documento constare scribit, Critic. pag. 202. Videatur etiam Auctor der ausführlichen Behauptung. pag. 27. in fine & pag. 28. Idem Anno 1540. & 1542. repetere instituit Melanchthon; quin Anno 1551. repetitionem tertia vice, sed prolixiorem paulò, idque jussu multorum Statuum Protestantiorum confecit, in Corpore Doctrinae Melanchthonis legendam, Scriptum utile & lectu dignum, a Joh. Museo appellatum, in quô Doctrina Augustanae Confessionis perspicue & eleganter declarata sit. Praelect. in Epitom. Formul. Concord. pag. 35. Et quamvis priores duae Editiones Melanchthonianae, Approbationem publicam Antecedentem haud habuerint, habuerunt tamen Consequentem, tàm aliorum Theologorum, Chytraei, Selnecceri, Brentii, Theologorum Altenburgicorum, hosque inter Pauli Eberi, Misnicorum, Grypswaldensium, ipsius quoque Lutheri, Tomo Germanico Jenensi 7. fol. 447. collat. cum fol. 448. b. quam Statuum Imperii in Conventibus, Wormatiensi, Ratisbonensi, Francofurtensi & Nauenburgico, approbationem suam sequentibus verbis declarantium: Neque verò animus nobis est, quòd per hanc repetitionem & renovatam Subscriptionem primum excusae Confessionis, discedere ab ea quae Anno 40. exhibita, vel in minimo velimus. Cum enim illa aliquot Colloquiis, & Disputationibus cum Adversariis institutis, in aliquibus Articulis ideo copiosius explicata sit, ut Caelestis Veritas eò magis illucesceret, & fiducia in meritum Redemtoris nostri J. C. absque humanis traditionibus pura & incorrupta conservaretur & ad posteritatem transmitteretur, perinde illam sicut & aliam, deserere non possumus, praesertim cum locupletata ista, Anno 40. & 42. typis evulgata Confessio multorum nunc in manibus & magna ex parte Ecclesiis & Scholis nostris in usu sit.