The Confutation of the Augsburg Confession
The reply to the Augsburg Confession drawn up for Charles V by Catholic theologians and read to the diet in August 1530. It says, article by article, what it accepts in the confession and what it rejects.
The Confutation (Confutatio Pontificia) opens by saying that the emperor referred the confession presented by the elector of Saxony, the other princes and the two cities to learned men of several nations, with instructions to approve what agreed with Catholic teaching and to mark what did not. The edition linked here dates the text 3 August 1530. It then takes the twenty-eight articles in order.
It is the primary source for the Catholic answer given at Augsburg itself, fifteen years before the Council of Trent. It accepts a good many articles, some with conditions, and rejects others, among them the statement that faith alone justifies. The page that hosts the translation is a Lutheran site, and its introduction judges the document harshly; the text of the Confutation below that introduction is what is cited here.
Cited in
- 25 June 1530, firm date