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 had tried the effect of moral suasion, and there is no need to regard the friendly terms in which he summoned the Lutheran Princes to the Diet of Augsburg as merely a cloak to conceal his hostile designs.

The Diet opened on June 20, 1530, and was very fully attended. Luther, who was still under the ban of the Empire, could come no nearer than Coburg; his place as preceptor of the Protestant Princes was taken by Melanchthon; and the celebrated Confession of Augsburg, though it was based on Luther's Schwabach Articles, was exclusively Melanchthon's work. The attitude of the Lutheran divines is well expressed by the tone of this document; they were clearly on the defensive, and the truculent Luther himself, who had dictated terms to the Archbishop of Mainz, was now reduced to craving his favour. Melanchthon was almost prostrated by the fear of religious war; and he thought it could best be averted by an alliance between Catholics and Lutherans against the Zwinglians, whom he regarded as no better than Anabaptists. His object in framing the Confession was therefore twofold, to minimise the differences between Lutherans and Catholics, and to exaggerate those between Lutherans and Zwinglians; he hoped thus to heal the breach with the former and complete it with the latter.

In form the Confession is an apologia, and not a creed; it does not assert expressly the truth of any dogma, but merely states the fact that such doctrines are taught in Lutheran churches, and justifies that teaching on the ground that it varies little if at all from that of the Church of Rome. It does not deny the divine right of the Papacy, the character indelebilis of the priesthood, or the existence of seven Sacraments; it does not assert the doctrine of predestination, which had brought Luther into conflict with Erasmus; and the doctrine of the Eucharist is so ambiguously expressed that the only fault the Catholics found was its failure to assert categorically the fact of transub-stantiation. In view of the substantial agreement which it endeavoured to establish between Catholic and Lutheran dogma, it was represented as unjustifiable to exclude the Reformers from the Catholic Church; their only quarrel with their opponents was about traditions and abuses, and their object was not polemic or propaganda, but merely toleration for themselves.

This Confession was to have been read at a public session of the Diet on June 24; but, apparently through Ferdinand's intervention, the plan was changed to a private recitation in the Emperor's apartments, and there it was read on the 25th by the Saxon Chancellor, Bayer. Philip of Hesse was loth to subscribe so mild a pronouncement, but eventually it was signed by all the original Protestant Princes, with the addition of the Elector's son, John Frederick, and by two cities, Nürnberg and Reutlingen. But the door was completely shut on the Zwinglians; in vain Bucer and Capito sought an arrangement with Melanchthon. He