Those citations are rampant throughout the Augsburg Confession and the Apology of the Augsburg Confession. I suggest you read them.
Also, I suggest you take information regarding Lutheran faith and tradition from sources friendly to the tradition-- rather than drinking the bathwater of Roman polemicists. I choose not to learn of Roman theology and practice from the Lutheran polemicists, because it is a poor way of putting your neighbor in the best possible light. You might want to take that under advisement.
One quick ammendment-- there is no “Lutheran doctrine of birth control.”
The false theory which Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin propounded with regard to justification is intimately connected with their views of the original state of man, and the consequences of his fall into sin; that is to say, they denied the difference between the natural and the supernatural sanctity and justice of man in his original condition, and explained the perfection which is attributed to the first man as a natural good and an essential part of his human nature, whereas this perfection is in reality something suprnatural.
With this fundamental error they combined the denial of free will to man, by asserting that all human action is the result of an absolute necessity, “a deed of God.” According to this doctrine, original sin is not the loss of of the supernatural gift of grace, but a horrid corruption of man’s nature, a wicked desire and inclination to sin. In some places Calvin calls original sin “an annihilation of God’s image in man;” in other places, “a horrid disfiguring of it.” Zwingli considers it as a natural dispostion to sin, as an evil from which other sins spring up as branches on a tree.
This condition of interior corruption, according to Protestant views, contiues to exist even after justification; for this is only a declaration of justice, an exterior imputation of the merits of Christ, whose justice is in virtue of special faith, the so-called “fides specialis,” imputed instrumentally to the sinner without any interior change or sanctification of man taking place. The “fides specialis” is nothing more than the firm confidence possessed by the sinner that God will not, for the sake of the merits of Christ, impute his sins to him. When, therefore, Protestants say that faith alone justifies (sola fides justificat), they understand by fides neither the dead faith nor the faith working by love . The fides specialis has nothing to do with faith in its proper sense.
A consequence of this doctrine is the supposition that man can have the absolute certainty of the acquired justification, which justification he can never lose; another consequence is, the assertion that justice is equal to all men, being capable neither of increase nor of decrease.
According to Luther, the loss of justification can only result from unbelief, - that is, from the want of fides specialis. Calvin, however asserts that a man who is once justified is absolutely certain of his salvation, and can never again lose the special justifying faith.
This view of the Genevan reformer is but a corollary of his doctrine of absolute predestination, according to which those predestined to life eternal receive faith and justification, whereas the reprobate never participate in the grace of justification.
Another consequence of this erroneous theory of justification is the rejection of the veneration of the saints, since, according to this system, no interior and true sanctification takes place, from which it follows that the sinner cannot acquire a dispostion for justification.
Connected with the denial of free will and the doctrine of imputed justice is the teaching of these so-called reformers on good works. At first they denied the possibility of good works; but gradually they softened down the harshness of a doctrine so repugnant to every Christian feeling, and admitted the possibility of a certain fulfillment of the law. On the other hand, they strenuously denied that good works are necessary to salvation, or that it is the duty of the justified to fulfill the law; thus setting forth a formal contradistinction between the law and gospel.
When, at a later period, Melanchthon and the Protestant theologians, in a reply to various controversies that had arisen speak of the use of good works to the justified, they still regard them as matters of indifference in respect to the justification and sanctification of men.
Te rejection of the dogma of purgatory, of prayer and of other good works for the dead, of indulgences, and the denial of the distinction betwen mortal and venial sin, were but necessary conclusions arising from the Protestant doctrine of justification.
According to this doctrine, also, the sacraments could not be instruments of imparting grace and justice. Luther considers them only signs of the divine promise of grace, a means of confirming the faith of the recipient in the remission of his sins.
cont.
**
