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 majority to pursue its own devices, and to discover within itself opportunities for division.

The failure of Melanchthon's plan of attaining peace with Catholics by breach with the Zwinglians produced a certain reaction of feeling and policy. Luther was, partially at any rate, disabused of his faith in Charles' intentions, and the pressure of common danger facilitated a renewed attempt at union. With this object in view, Bucer, the chief author of the Tetrapolitana, called on Luther at Coburg on September 25, and was received with surprising favour. Luther even expressed a willingness to lay down his life three times if only the dissensions among the Reformers might be healed, and Bucer himself had a genius for accommodation. Under these favourable circumstances he contrived to evolve a plausible harmonisation of the Wittenberg and Tetrapolitan doctrines of the Eucharist which was sufficient for the day and led to an invitation of the south German cities to the meeting of Protestant Powers to be held in December at Schmalkalden.

Meanwhile the Catholic majority of the Diet continued its deliberations at Augsburg. The aid against the Turks which Charles desired had not yet been voted, and before he obtained it the Emperor had to drop his demand for Ferdinand's ecclesiastical endowment, and promise to press upon the Pope the redress of the hundred gravamina which were once more revived. Substantial concessions to individual Electors secured the prospect of Ferdinand's election as King of the Romans, which took place at Cologne on January 5, 1531; and the Diet concluded with the adoption of the Recess on November 19. The Edict of Worms was to be put into execution, episcopal jurisdictions were to be maintained, and Church property to be restored. Of more practical importance than these resolutions was the reconstitution of the Reichs-kammergericht, which henceforward began to play an important part in imperial politics. It was now organised so as to be an efficient instrument in carrying out the will of the majority, and was solemnly pledged to the suppression of Lutheranism. The campaign was to open, not on a field of battle, but in the Courts of law; and the attack was to be directed, not against the persons of Lutheran Princes, but against their secularisation of Church property Countless suits were already pending before the Kammergericht; and, however inconsistent such a policy may have been in the Habsburgs who had themselves profited largely by secularisation, the law of the Empire gave the Kammergericht no option but to decide against the Lutherans, and its decisions would have completely undermined the foundations of the rising Lutheran Church.

This resort to law instead of to arms is characteristic of Charles' caution Backed as he was by an overwhelming majority of the Diet, it might seem that the Emperor would make short work of the dissident Princes and towns. But in German imperial politics there was usually many a slip between judgment and execution; and of the Princes who