Augsburg Confession in the context of "Early New High German"

In the Lutheran Church, Confession (also called Holy Absolution) is the sacrament given by Christ to the Church by which individual men and women may receive the forgiveness of sins. According to the Large Catechism, the third sacrament of Holy Absolution is related to Holy Baptism.

In the Lutheran Churches, the Office of the Keys exercised through confession and absolution is the "authority which Christ has given to His Church on earth: to forgive the sins of the penitent sinners, but to retain the sins of the impenitent as long as they do not repent."

Augsburg (UK: /ˈaʊɡzbɜːrɡ/ OWGZ-burg, also US: /ˈɔːɡz-/ AWGZ-; German: [ˈaʊksbʊʁk] ; Swabian German: Ougschburg) is a city in the Bavarian part of Swabia, Germany, around 50 kilometres (31 mi) west of the Bavarian capital Munich. It is a university town and the regional seat of the Regierungsbezirk Swabia with a well-preserved Altstadt (historical city centre). Augsburg is an urban district and home to the institutions of the Landkreis Augsburg. It is the third-largest city in Bavaria (after Munich and Nuremberg), with a population of 304,000 and 885,000 in its metropolitan area.

After Neuss, Trier, Worms, Cologne and Xanten, Augsburg is one of Germany's oldest cities, founded in 15 BC by the Romans as Augusta Vindelicorum and named after the Roman emperor Augustus. It was a Free Imperial City from 1276 to 1803 and the home of the patrician Fugger and Welser families that dominated European banking in the 16th century. According to Behringer, in the sixteenth century it became "the dominant centre of early capitalism", having benefited from being part of the Kaiserliche Reichspost system as "the location of the most important post office within the Holy Roman Empire" and the city's close connection to Maximilian I. The city played a leading role in the Reformation as the site of the 1530 Augsburg Confession and the 1555 Peace of Augsburg. The Fuggerei, the oldest social housing complex in the world, was founded in 1513 by Jakob Fugger.

The priesthood of all believers is the common priesthood of all Christians (a concept broadly accepted by all churches), while the term can also refer to a specific Protestant understanding that this universal priesthood precludes the ministerial priesthood (i.e., holy orders) found in some other churches, including Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

The inclusionary Catholic version proposes a common priesthood that is different from both holy orders and the priesthood of Christ. The exclusionary version, elaborated in the theology of Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin among other reformers, became prominent as a tenet of Protestant Christian doctrine, though the exact meaning of the belief and its implications vary widely among denominations.

Church visible is a term of Christian theology and ecclesiology referring to the visible community of Christian believers on Earth, as opposed to the Church invisible or Church triumphant, constituted by the fellowship of saints and the company of the elect.

In ecclesiology, the Church visible has many names, such as Kingdom of God, Disciples of Christ and People of God. St. Ignatius of Antioch was one of the first Christian authors to write about the subject, insisting that the Church visible was centered on the Bishop and the Eucharist or Last Supper.

The Book of Concord (1580) or Concordia (often referred to as the Lutheran Confessions) is the historic doctrinal standard recognized as authoritative by many Lutheran church bodies since the 16th century. It consists of ten creedal documents and is also known as the symbolical book of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

The Book of Concord was published in German on June 25, 1580, in Dresden, the fiftieth anniversary of the presentation of the Augsburg Confession to Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Augsburg. The authoritative Latin edition was published in 1584 in Leipzig.

The Fugger family (German pronunciation: [ˈfʊɡɐ]) is a German family that was historically a prominent group of European bankers, members of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century mercantile patriciate of Augsburg, international mercantile bankers, and venture capitalists. Alongside the Welser family, the Fugger family controlled much of the European economy in the sixteenth century and accumulated enormous wealth. The Fuggers held a near monopoly on the European copper market.

This banking family replaced the Medici family who influenced all of Europe during the Renaissance. The Fuggers took over many of the Medicis' assets and their political power and influence. They were closely affiliated with the House of Habsburg whose rise to world power they financed. Unlike the citizenry of their hometown and most other trading patricians of German free imperial cities, such as the Tuchers, they never converted to Lutheranism, as presented in the Augsburg Confession, but rather remained with the Roman Catholic Church and thus close to the Habsburg emperors.

Evangelisch-Lutherische Gebetsbruderschaft (Evangelical Lutheran Prayer Brotherhood) is a German Lutheran religious society for men and women, based on the doctrines of the Bible and Book of Concord, with regular prayer for the renewal and unity of the Church.

Prayer Brotherhood was founded in Leipzig by Lutheran theological students. The main objectives in the beginning were Augsburg Confession, regular Eucharist on Sundays, and the daily office with mutual prayer.