§ 15. The disastrous influences of the demagogue Thomas Münzer (born in 1490), and of his fanatical party, the Zwickau prophets, on sound doctrine and sound morals, as well as the blood which they had shed, were still vividly remembered.—Servetus, the Unitarian, had perished, but he left a seed behind; the doctrine of Christ’s deity still remained a point of attack. And besides these false teachers, several others, who were originally connected in various modes with the Lutheran Church, promulgated at various times opinions which seemed to be subversive of all Scripture doctrine.—Agricola, who had originally been an active adherent of Luther, gradually departed from the faith. He unquestionably betrayed the interests of Protestantism by sanctioning the Augsburg Interim of 1548. He engaged in a controversy, at first with Melanchthon, and then with Luther himself, on the subject of the proper “Use of the law”—the Antinomistic controversy—maintaining that the law was no longer of importance to the believer, and that the Gospel alone should be preached. He died in 1566, when Arndt was about eleven years old. The confusion in the church, which he created by his dangerous sentiments on several points, was long painfully felt.—The Osiandrian controversy, respecting Justification, and its relation to Sanctification, began in 1549, and closed only when Arndt was already a student.—The Majoristic controversy originated in the public declaration made by G. Major, that “good works are _necessary to salvation_.” The fears which such a doctrine, that savored of popery, produced among orthodox and devout Lutherans, were excessive. Those who opposed Major, were alarmed by his unguarded expressions, and apprehended that the Gospel doctrine of _Justification by faith in Christ alone, without human works or merit_, would be endangered, unless they silenced him. The controversy, in its most energetic form, terminated about seven years after Arndt’s birth, but the indirect effects of the misconceptions connected with the great topic of this controversy, were deeply felt by him.—The Synergistic controversy, relating to the question whether man could co-operate with the Holy Spirit in the work of his conversion, began in the year in which Arndt was born, and was maintained with great energy during several years.—The so-called Cryptocalvinistic controversy, referring mainly to the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, and involving certain important questions respecting the Person of Christ, commenced about three years before Arndt’s birth, and agitated the church during many years.—These, and other subjects on which also controversies had arisen, were, in the good providence of God, at length calmly considered by learned and devout Lutheran theologians, conscientiously examined in the light of the divine Word, impartially decided, and set forth, in the year 1580, in the FORMULA OF CONCORD, the last of the special Lutheran creeds, all the doctrines of which Arndt