CHAP. I. of men and devils against us is fierce, yet I have great hope that the grace of God, already manifested, shall increase and wax stronger in us... I have committed the whole business to my Lord God, and I doubt not that he, who hath wrought in us to will, will grant us also to perform. Certainly it proceeds not from men, to devise and proclaim doctrine like our's. Since then the work is God's, and all things depend not on our skill or power, but on his, we shall see who they are that dare to fight against him. Let no hindrance be put in the way of those who wish to do it; for it is written, Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days. They may make a beginning, and threaten terrible things, but they shall never be able to perform their devices.-May Christ by his Holy Spirit comfort your highness! Amen." It appears that, in his closing communications with the protestant princes, the emperor charged their preachers with having had "no small hand in the rebellion and wars of the boors ;" and themselves with injustice and robbery in the deprivation of the monks, and alienation of religious houses-the full restoration of which he demanded. With respect to the former, they utterly denied the charge; affirming that both themselves and their preachers had done every thing in their power to prevent and put down those disorders, and appealing to what had passed at the diet of Spires, four years before, as fully exculpating them, and sufficiently explaining the true causes of those insurrections: and indeed this charge afterwards drew from the elector of Mentz some apology. With respect to the latter charge, they alleged that 1 Serk, ii. 201, 202. 2 Sleid. 137. Seck. ii. 205. the monks had not been turned out, but had fled in the time of the rustic war; and that the elector was ready to put the revenues under sequestration, till the decision of a general council should take place the accounts to be rendered to the emperor: that, if the design of holding a council did not take effect, then the proceeds should be applied to pious uses: in short, that nothing of a pecuniary nature should be an obstacle to accommodation. But this did not give satisfaction; the restitution of the superstitious rites and religion, by means of the monks, being the object really aimed at.' A. D. 1530. fessions. Besides the " Confession of Augsburg," two Other Conothers were presented to the diet: one, called the Tetrapolitan, deriving its name from the four cities of Strasburg, Constance, Memmingen, and Lindaw; and the other from Zuinglius.2 The former of these was drawn up by Bucer, and, as well as that of which we have so largely treated, was esteemed a masterpiece. Indeed the two differed, in sentiment, in little else than the article of the eucharist; namely, concerning the manner, or sense, in which Christ's body and blood are present in that sacrament.3 Bucer, who perhaps occupied a middle ground between Luther and Zuinglius upon that point, and more nearly the ground of our own church than either of them, earnestly pleaded that, as the 1 Seck. ii. 204. also iii. 11, 12. See Milner v. 522-525. (1123-1125.) Mosheim iii. 355. (e.) 3 On the difference which unhappily arose between the great continental reformers on this subject, I refer the reader to dean Milner's History, v. 191 &c, 396 &c. (772, 990.) * Milner iv appendix, Bucer. (v. p. 5.) According to Du Pin (vi. 121.) he taught "that the body and blood of Christ are received by faith" in the Lord's supper CHAP. I. danger seemed to thicken, and their difference did not appear very essential, they should all join in one Confession-an union which the landgrave of Hesse also had long been labouring to effect: but here even the mild and yielding Melancthon was as tenacious as Luther himself could be, and would by no means admit of it, or hold communion with those who differed from him upon this subject! Such, alas! is the weakness, and, on one point or another, the narrowness of human nature, even in the best and greatest of men.2 Zuinglius's Confession, probably as proceeding from an individual, and that individual not so immediately connected with the empire, seems to have engaged but little attention: but of the Confession of the four cities a separate refutation, and that of a sharper kind, was prepared by Faber and Eckius. The same part was acted over again with their deputies, as with the protestant princes; except that, as being less powerful, and in some respects more obnoxious, they were treated with greater harshness. The authors of these repeated popish refutations were liberally rewarded for the services they had rendered-Faber, in particular, soon after obtaining from Ferdinand the see of Vienna: which gave occasion to which is precisely the language of the church of England. See Catechism, and Article xxviii. 1 Milner v. 518-522. (1118-1123.) Du Pin vi. 121, 122. 2 Some subsidiary motives also operated. Zuinglius's Confession seems to have been justly objectionable in its doctrine concerning obedience to rulers, and perhaps in some other points and all the Sacramentarians' lay under peculiar odium, with which Melancthon frankly tells Bucer he was not willing needlessly to load the protestant princes. Seck. ii. 199. Erasmus sarcastically to remark, that " poor A. D. 1530. That eminent scholar had been invited to be Erasmus, present at Augsburg, and to assist with his advice in the religious discussions: but he declined the honour, having no inclination to incur the odium with which it would be attended, probably from both parties. Indeed he was seriously ill at the time. He corresponded, however, with different persons concerned, Campeggio, Melancthon, and others; still preserving his character, as Maimbourg not unjustly expresses it-" always hanging in suspense between the two parties."2 He pleaded, however, for the toleration of the protestants, as the only means of preventing dangerous extremities. "The power of the emperor,' he writes to Campeggio, (August 18,)" is great; but all do not acknowledge it. The Germans so acknowledge his authority, as rather to command than to obey. Luther's doctrine," he observes, "is spread all over Germany; so that from the ocean as far as Switzerland that chain of mischief is stretched. If the emperor therefore should declare, that he would 'On these Confessions, and the treatment they met with, see Sleid. 137-139. Seck. ii. 198, 199, 209. Du Pin, vi. 119-123. 2 Seck. ii. 196-198 "Semper nempe inter utramque pártem dubius hærens."-" I could not have gone," he says to one of his correspondents, "without running the risk of my life, and I chose rather to live. I knew very well, that, if I went thither, I should bring mischief upon my own head, without being able to compose the dissensions and tumults. I also knew on whose judgment the emperor relied; on divines, in whose opinion whoever will dare to open his mouth in favour of piety is 'a Lutheran,' and worse than a Lutheran. ...So I have some obligations to my bad state of health, which furnishes me with a plea for absence." Ep. 1152, in Jortin i. 501. 4to. CHAP. I. "Recess" or Edict of Augsburg. in all things comply with the interest and desire of the pope, it is to be feared he would have but few to approve his doings....The state of the church was sorely distressed in former times, when the Arians, Pagans, Donatists, Manichees broached their doctrines, and barbarous nations (like the Turks now,) made war against it yet it weathered all those storms. Time and patience, sometimes cure the worst distempers: the Bohemians were tolerated, though they acknowledged not the pope; and, if the same thing were allowed the Lutherans, it would not be amiss, in my judgment. Though this would be bad enough, yet it were much easier to be borne than war." "Such however," remarks Maimbourg, with evident satisfaction, "Such were not the sentiments of the emperor or the catholic princes." This the event sufficiently declared. The diet continued to sit about six weeks after the departure of the protestant princes, engaged in providing supplies for the Turkish war, and arranging other matters; and it then closed by issuing its "recess," or final decree, on the nineteenth of November. This decree enjoined the continuance, or restoration where they had been abolished, of all the accustomed rites and superstitions; condemned the denial of "free will "2 as "brutish, and reproachful to God," and rejected the 1 Sleid. 133. 2 The reader should learn to distinguish (which is too seldom done,) between free will, in the sense in which it was denied by the reformers, and is rejected by our church, (Art. x.) and free agency. All that is meant to be denied is, that fallen man will ever choose that which is spiritually good, without the prevenient grace of God.-See Scott's Works, vii. 76-102, 126-145. What Luther understood by "the bondage of the will" is sufficiently explained in Dean |