28. Now, it might appear as though the two camps have opposite beliefs regarding whether we have free choice or not in our conversion or in the process by which we are made just. In fact, though, the two actually do agree with each other, as we can see if we consider in the right way the statements written in the Council of Trent; see §6 a, b; and compare these with the things written in the Formula of Concord; see §15 m. All the people in the Christian world have been baptized. Christians therefore have free choice, which allows them not only to hear the Word of God but also to agree with it and embrace it with faith. Therefore no one in Christianity is like a log of wood.

21. 3 The leading reformers — Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin — retained all the dogmas regarding the trinity of persons in the Divine, original sin, the assigning of Christ’s merit to us, and our being justified by faith, in the same past and present form they had had among Roman Catholics. The reformers separated goodwill or good works from that faith, however, and declared that our good works contribute nothing to our salvation, for the purpose of clearly differentiating themselves from Roman Catholics with regard to the essentials of the church, which are faith and goodwill.