07070.3 - Declaration of Thorn

THE COLLOQUY OF THORN. A.D. 1645. The official edition of the Acts: Acta Conventus Thoruniensis celebrati a. 1645, etc., Warsaw, 1646 (very incorrect). The Acts, with the two Protestant Confessions (which were excluded from the official Acts), in Calovius, Historia Syncretistica (1682), 1685, pp. 199-560. The Reformed Declaratio Thoruniensis, Latin, in Niemeyer (pp. 669-689); German, in Böckel (pp. 865-884). The Colloquy of Thorn, in West Prussia (Colloquium Thoruniense ), was likewise a well-meant but fruitless union conference in a time of sectarian intolerance and the suicidal folly of the Thirty-Years’ War. In this case the movement proceeded from the Roman Catholic king, Wladislaus IV., of Poland (1632-1648). In this country moderate Lutherans, Calvinists, and Moravians had formed a conservative union in the Consensus of Sendomir (1570), and a treaty of peace secured equal civil rights to Protestants and Romanists (Pax Dissidentium in 1573). But this peace was denounced by the Pope as a league of Christ with Belial, and undermined by the Jesuits, who obtained the control of the education of the Polish nobility, and are to a large extent responsible for the ultimate dismemberment and ruin of that unfortunate kingdom.

Wladislaus made a patriotic effort to heal the religious discords of his subjects, and invited Romanists and Dissenters (Protestants) to a charitable colloquy (colloquium caritativum, fraterna collatio ) in the city of Thorn, which was then under the protection of the King of Poland (since 1454), and had embraced the Lutheran faith (1557). It began April 18, 1645, in the town-hall. There were three parties. The twenty-eight Roman deputies, including eight Jesuits, were determined to defeat the object of peace, and to prevent any concessions to Protestants. The Reformed had twenty-four delegates, chief among them the electoral chaplains John Bergius and Fr. Reichel, of Brandenburg, and the Moravian bishop Amos Comenius. The Lutheran deputation consisted of fifteen, afterwards of twenty-eight members; the most prominent were Calovius of Dantzic and Hülsemann of Wittenberg, the champions of the strictest orthodoxy, and George Calixtus of Helmstädt, the leader of a mild and comprehensive union theology. [SeeNote #1059] The sessions were private (’plebs penitus arcenda ’). The king’s chancellor, Prince George Ossolinski, presided. The first business, called ’liquidatio ,’ was to be the preparation of a correct statement of the doctrinal system of each party. The Roman Catholic Confession, with a list of rejected misrepresentations, was ready early in September, and read in the second public session, Sept. 16. It was received among the official acts. On the same day the Reformed Confession was read, under the title Declaratio doctrinæ, ecclesiarum Reformatarum catholicæ. But the Romanists objected to the word ’catholic ,’ which they claimed as their monopoly, and to the antithetical part as being offensive to them, and excluded the document from the official acts. The Lutheran Confession was ready the 20th of September, but was even refused a public reading. [SeeNote #1060] The Protestants sent a deputation to the king, who received them and their confessions with courtesy and kindness; but the Romanists demanded more alterations than the Protestants were willing to make, and used every effort to prevent the official publication of heresies. Unfortunately the dissensions among the Lutherans, and between them and the Reformed, strengthened the Romish party. The Colloquy closed Nov. 21, ’mutua valedictione et in fraterna caritate, ’ but without accomplishing its end. Calixtus says: ’The Colloquy was no colloquy at all, certainly no colloquium caritativum, but irritativum. ’ It left the three confessions where they were before, and added new fuel to the syncretistic controversy in Germany, [SeeNote #1061] Calovius and Hülsemann charged Calixtus with aiding the Calvinists in their confession. The city of Thorn, which spent 50,000 guilders for the conference, suffered much from the Thirty-Years’ War, also by a plague, and became the scene of a dreadful massacre of Protestants, Dec. 7, 1724, stirred up by the Jesuits in revenge for an attack on their college. The Declaration of Thorn [SeeNote #1062] is one of the most careful statements of the Reformed Creed, and the only one among the three confessions of this Colloquy which acquired a practical importance by its adoption among the three Brandenburg Confessions. It is divided into a general part (generales professio ) and a special declaration (specialis declaratio ). The former acknowledges the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments in the original Hebrew and Greek, as the only perfect rule of faith, containing all that is necessary for our salvation. It adopts, also, in a subordinate sense, as explanatory summaries of Scripture doctrine, the œcumenical Creeds, and doctrinal decisions of the ancient undivided Church in opposition to the trinitarian, christological, and Pelagian heresies. [SeeNote #1063] Finally, as regards the controversy with Rome, it accepts the Altered Augsburg Confession and the Consensus of Sendomir (1570) as correct statements of the Scripture doctrines, differing in form, but agreeing in essence. The ’Special Declaration’ states the several articles of the Reformed system, both in its agreement with, and in its departure from, the creeds of Romanists and Lutherans. The document is signed by a number of noblemen and clergymen from Poland, Lithuania, and Brandenburg.

Note #1059 It took Calixtus nearly three weeks to travel from Helmstädt to Thorn.

Note #1060 The Latin text in Calovius’s Hist. syncret. pp. 403-421; the German and Latin texts were separately issued at Leipzig, 1655, and at Dantzic, 1735. See also Scripta facientia ad Colloquium Thoruniense; accessit G. Calixti consideratio etepikrisis,HelmstäDeuteronomy, 1645, and Calixti Annotationes et animadversiones in Confessionem Reformatorum, Wolfenbüttel, 1655.

Note #1061

Hence the distich on the Synod of Thorn: ’Quid synodus? nodus: Patrum chorus integer? æger: Conventus? ventus: Gloria? stramen. Amen. ’

Note #1062 The full title is ’Professio Doctrinæ Ecclesiarum Reformatarum in Regno Poloniæ, Magno Ducatu Lithuaniæ, annexisque Regni Provinciis, in Conventu Thoruniensi, Anni 1645, ad liquidationem Controversiarum maturandam, exhibita d. 1 Septembris. ’ First published at Berlin, 1646, under the title ’Scripta partis Reformatæ in Colloquio Thoruniensi ,’ etc.

Note #1063 In the expression of agreement with the ancient Church the Declaration of Thorn is more explicit than any other Protestant confession, Lutheran or Calvinistic or Anglican. After saying that the summary of Scripture doctrine is contained in the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Words of Institution of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the Declaration proceeds: ’Si quid vero, in hisce Doctrinæ Christianæ capitibus, dubitationis aut controversiæ de genuino eorum sensu exoriatur, profitemur porro, nos amplecti ceu interpretationem Scripturarum certam et indubitatam, Symbolum Nicænum et Constantinopolitanum, iisdem plane verbis, quibus in Synodi Tridentinæ Sessione tertia, tanquam Principium illud, in quo omnes, qui fidem Christi profitentur, necessario conveniunt, et Fundamentum firmum et unicum, contra quod portæ inferorum nunquam prævalebunt, proponitur. ’Cui etiam consonare Symbolum, quod dicitur Athanasianum, agnoscimus: nec non Ephesinæ primæ, et Chalcedonensis Synodi Confessiones: quinetiam, quæ Quinta et Sexta Synodi, Nestorianorum et Eutychianorum reliquiis opposuere: quæque adversus Pelagianos olim Milevitana Synodus et Arausicana secunda ex Scripturis docuere.Quinimo, quicquid primitiva Ecclesia ab ipsis usque Apostolorum temporibus, unanimi deinceps et notorio consensu, tanquam Articulum fidei necessarium, credidit, docuit, idem nos quoque ex Scripturis credere et docere profitemur.’Hoc igitur Fidei nostræ professione, tanquam Christiani vere Catholici, ab omnibus veteribus et recentibus Hæresibus, quas prisca universalis Ecclesia unanimi consensu ex Scripturis rejecit atque damnavit, nos nostrasque Ecclesias segregamus.’