Here is another article worth reading. I will stop here for a while. There is a purpose for me in publishing this articles and it is based on my need to "revive" in me the REFORMING mindset, not to say SPIRIT of Luther.
http://www.presenttruthmag.com/archive/XXXII/32-6.htm
read the entire article and here is some of it (not a small excerpt)
"There is compelling evidence for this in the account of what took place at the Diet of Regensburg in 1541. Charles V was more than anxious to mend the theological rift which had been threatening the unity of his empire for twenty years. In order to heal the wound, he appointed three theologians from each side to sit down together and draft a theological statement which would be acceptable to both Protestants and Catholics. The emperor had high hopes that a reconciliation could be achieved. His hopes sprang from the fact that certain
Roman theologians had begun to say that Luther's doctrine of justification was "a part of that truth which they had always held and taught." The theologians affirmed that there was "no real, or, at least, no radical, difference between the two parties, but only such as might be easily adjusted by mutual explanation and concession."
The foremost advocate of this conciliatory approach was Cardinal Gasparo Contarini, the papal legate in Germany. Contarini had for some time openly expressed his view that "the Lutheran concern for justification by faith was in fact the essence of the Catholic faith also." Protestantism, in other words, was essentially Catholic! He believed that the Protestant schism had been caused "by a misunderstanding of Catholicism." To do away with this understanding, which was preventing the Protestants from appreciating the "real" Catholicism, was his great hope.
At the diet of Regensburg, Contarini worked closely with the three Catholic theologians appointed by Charles in an attempt to draft a statement on justification which would be acceptable to the Protestants. As the discussion proceeded, it became obvious that the Catholics were willing to make "large concessions . . . in favor of the Protestant doctrine." The article finally agreed to by the Catholics is a clear renouncement of semiPelagianism. It confesses that man's salvation does not depend on his strength but results solely from God's grace. The two main characteristics of the article are "an insistence on the entirely gratuitous character of our justification" and, secondly, "on the impossibility of driving a wedge between faith and love."36 It was agreed that sinful humanity can be justified only through an extrinsic, imputed righteousness. Whether this applies to regenerate as well as unregenerate men was left unclear. (The full text of the article appears in an appendix at the end of this essay.)
The article was initially accepted by the three Lutheran representatives. It was generally felt that nothing in the agreed article was Incompatible with the Protestant view. When John Calvin heard about the agreement, he wrote to William Farel of his great amazement that the Catholics had conceded so much. He confessed that he could find nothing in the document that was necessarily contrary to Protestant theology although he regretted that the exposition could not have been more explicit.
Consequently, it came as a surprise to many when Luther vigorously rejected the Regensburg agreement. Wrote the Reformer:
Popish writers pretend that they have always taught, what we now teach, concerning faith and good works, and that they are unjustly accused of the contrary: thus the wolf puts on the sheep's skin till he gains admission into the fold.
Luther, and the Reformation as a whole, rejected the Regensburg article because it was felt that the wording was dangerously ambiguous. . . ."
Milt
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Originally Posted by Robert R. Higby
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