The Augsburg Confession Articles 1-17
The Chief Articles of Faith
Article 1 Concerning God. The Churches among us teach with great agreement, the decree of the synod of Nicea concerning the unity of the divine essence and concerning the three persons is true and should be believed without any doubt. Clearly, because there is one divine essence, which is both called God and is God, eternal, intangible, impartible, with immeasurable power, wisdom, goodness, the creator and keeper of all things visible and invisible. But however there are three persons, of the same essence and power and coeternal, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And the name “person” is used as this signal, which the writers of the churches used in this case, so that it signifies not a part or a quality in another, but that which stands in the individual.
They condemn all heresies, these that have come against this article, just as the Manicheans, who put tow principles, good and bad, likewisethe Valentinians, Arians, Eunomian, Mohammedans and all of these similar ones. They condemn also the Samosatenians, old and new, who dispute that there is only one, concerning the Word and the Holy Scripture cleverly and wickedly they strike, that separate persons they are not, but that the word signifies an able to speak word and the spirit a having been created movement in things.
Article 2 Concerning sin of origin.
Likewise they teach, that after the fall of Adam all men, have been propagated following nature, they have been born with sin, this is, without a fear of God, without trust towards God and with longing, and because (they teach) that this illness or sin of birth is truly sin, it damns and now brings eternal death to those who are not born again through baptism and the Holy Spirit.
They damn the Pelagians and others, who deny that the sin of birth is a sin and, so that they diminish the glory of Christ’s merits and favors, they dispute that humans are able to be justified in the...