A few only of the works from which valuable aid has been received, can be mentioned:—Mosheim and McLaine’s Ecclesiastical History; Gregory and Ruter’s Church History; Encyclopædia Americana; Brown’s Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge; Adams’s View of Religions, and History of the Jews; Benedict’s History of all Religions; Evans’s Sketches; Buck’s and Henderson’s Theological Dictionaries; Eliot’s, Allen’s, and Blake’s Biographical Dictionaries; Davenport; Watson; Grant’s Nestorians, Coleman’s Christian Antiquities; Ratio Disciplinæ; Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates, &c.
To clergymen and laymen of all denominations, who have assisted the Editor in presenting their various views with clearness and fairness; to the secretaries of the several missionary boards; to editors of religious journals, and to other persons who have kindly furnished documents for the Statistics and Biographical Sketches, he tenders acknowledgments of unfeigned gratitude.
While the Editor assures the public that the whole has been prepared with much diligence and care, and with an entire freedom from sectarian zeal or party bias, he cannot but indulge the hope that his “Book of Religions” will prove acceptable and beneficial to the community, as imbodying a great variety of facts on a subject of deep concern, worthy of the exercise of our highest faculties, and requiring our most charitable conclusions.
Creed, Andover, 138 Apostles’, 102 Athanasian, 102 Augsburg, 302 New Haven, 142 Nicene, 105 Orthodox, 132
Indian Missions, 342 Religions, 210 Statistics, 347
Methodists, Episcopal, 117, 321 Protestant, 123, 321 Methodists, Primitive, 305 Methodists’ Missions, 344 Views of Perfection, 274
Miller’s Views on the Second Coming of Christ, 170
Primitive Christians, 290 Methodists, 305
Protestant Methodists, 123, 321 Missions, 333
Reformed Dutch Church, 88, 324 German Church, 90
Statistics of Churches, 311 of Missions, 333
Yezidees, or Worshippers of the Devil, 285
LUTHERANS, OR, THE EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH.
This denomination adheres to the opinions of Martin Luther, the celebrated reformer.
The Lutherans, of all Protestants, are those who differ least from the Romish church, as they affirm that the body and blood of Christ are materially present in the sacrament of the Lord’s supper, though in an incomprehensible manner: this they term _consubstantiation_. They likewise represent some rites and institutions, as the use of images in churches, the vestments of the clergy, the private confession of sins, the use of wafers in the administration of the Lord’s supper, the form of exorcism in the celebration of baptism, and other ceremonies of the like nature, as tolerable, and some of them useful. The Lutherans maintain, with regard to the divine decrees, that they respect the salvation or misery of men in consequence of a previous knowledge of their sentiments and characters, and not as founded on the mere will of God. See _Augsburg Confession of Faith_.