The Elector of Saxony instructed Christopher Carlowitz to send a copy of the "Interim" to Philip Melanchthon.[[60]] The latter's reply was singularly devoid of courage. It was supposed to be inspired by the theologians of Wittenberg and Leipzig, who in that way sounded the first notes of "Adiaphorism." Carlowitz promptly communicated this epistle everywhere. It aroused general surprise, as well as the most opposed feelings; grief and consternation among the adherents to the Augsburg confession, matchless jubilation among the Catholics. And the Lord alone knows how they bellowed it about in the four corners of Germany, how they availed themselves of it to proclaim their victory.
The ecclesiastical electors sent Melanchthon's letter, together with the book, to the pope, and what with backslidings and plotting the pear was very soon ripe. The publication of the "Interim" took place on May 14, at four o'clock in the afternoon, in presence of the States assembled. The emperor had it printed in Latin and in German. In the first proofs handed to the emperor the passage from St. Paul, "Justificati fide pacem habemus," was altogether changed by the suppression of the word fide; the confessionists protested energetically, and confounded the would-be authors of the fraud.
The stern tone of the act of promulgation stopped neither speeches nor scathing writings. Sterling refutations were published even outside Germany; the two best known are the Latin treatise of Calvin, which spread all over the empire--in Italy, in France, in Poland, etc.; and a piece of writing in German, which was more to the taste of everybody, and one of whose authors was Æpinus, superintendent of Hamburg.
Seigneur de Granvelle and his son, the Bishop of Arras, strongly persuaded the Elector of Saxony to adhere to the "Interim," in order to regain his freedom, but the prince remained faithful to the Confession of Augsburg. Thereupon they took away his books; there was no meat on his table on fast days, and his chaplain, whom he had kept with him with the consent of the emperor, had to fly in disguise. The landgrave, on the other hand, who did not care to profess greater wisdom than the fathers of the Church, consented to recommend the book to his subjects, and begged to be pardoned for the sake of Christ and all His saints.
At the closure of the Diet, I took, like his Imperial Majesty, the road to the Low Countries. The stay of the emperor at Ulm brought about the dismissal of the council, which was replaced by more devoted creatures. The six ministers were bidden to accept the "Interim." Four of them were not to be shaken, and they were led away captive in the suite of the emperor; the other two, in spite of their apostasy, had to leave wives and children, and scant consideration was shown to them. At Spires, the prior of the barefooted Carmelites was, like all the brothers of his monastery, a good evangelical, though all had preserved the dress of their order. During four years I had seen him going to and fro in the town, dressed in his monk's frock; each Sunday he went into the pulpit and the church was crowded to the very porch. Never did he breathe a word about the pope or about Luther, but he was a master of pure doctrine, and at the approach of the emperor he fled in a layman's dress. Worms and the whole of the country lost their preachers. Landau possessed a select group of learned and distinguished ministers, because the town offered many advantages; a delightful situation, excellent fare, and a splendid vineyard at the very gates of the town; but the ministers had to abandon the place to the popish priests, scamps without experience, without instruction, without piety, and without decency.
I often had occasion afterwards to go to Landau, where the advocate of my father, Dr. Engelhardt, resided. One Sunday, at the termination of the mass, I heard a young and impudent good-for-nothing hold forth from the pulpit in the following strain: "The Lutherans are opposed to the worship of Mary and the saints. Now, my friends, be good enough to listen to this. The soul of a man who had just died got to the door of heaven, and Peter shut it in his face. Luckily, the Mother of God was taking a stroll outside with her sweet son. The deceased addresses her, and reminds her of the Paters and the Aves he has recited to her glory, the candles he has burned before her images. Thereupon Mary says to Jesus, 'It's the honest truth, my son.' The Lord, however, objected, and addressed the supplicant: 'Hast thou never read that I am the way and the door to everlasting life?' He asks. 'If thou art the door, I am the window,' replies Mary, taking the 'soul' by the hair and flinging it into heaven through the open casement. And now I ask you, is it not the same whether you enter Paradise by the door or by the window? And those abominable Lutherans dare to maintain that one must not invoke the Virgin Mary." That was the kind of scandalous irreligion exhibited in the places where formerly the healthy evangelical doctrine was preached.
The landgrave's submission to the "Interim" only brought him into contempt. His wife, who had hastened to Spires to beseech the emperor, was allowed to remain day and night with the prisoner during his week's stay there. At the departure for Worms I saw the landgrave pass at eight in the morning, with his escort of Spaniards with long arquebuses. They hemmed him in in front, behind, and at the sides, while he himself was bestriding a broken-down nag with empty and open holsters, and the hilt of his sword securely tied to its sheath. A serried crowd of strangers and inhabitants, women and servants, old and young, were pressing around his escort, as if there had been an order given to that effect. They cried: "Here goes the wretched rebel, the felon, the scoundrel that he is." They said worse things which, from certain scruples, I abstain from repeating. It looked like the procession of a vulgar malefactor who was being taken to the scaffold.
Pure chance made me an eye-witness of a diverting scene at Augsburg. I have already said that Duke Maurice had ingratiated himself very much with the Bavarian court ladies. One Sunday, in December, when the weather was fine, he was ready to go out in a sleigh. I happened to be at the door with several others, who also heard the following dialogue. Carlowitz came down the stairs of the chancellerie in hot haste, exclaiming: "Whither is your Highness going?" "To Munich," was the answer. "But your Highness has an audience to-morrow with the emperor." "I am going to Munich," repeated the duke. Thereupon Carlowitz: "If, thanks to me, the electoral dignity is practically yours, it is nevertheless true that your frivolity causes you to be despised of their Majesties and of all honourable people." Maurice merely laid the whip on his horses, which started off at a gallop, Carlowitz shouting at the top of his voice: "Very well, then; go to the devil, and may heaven blast you and your sledge." When the prince returned, Carlowitz announced his intention of going to Leipzig. "If I miss the New Year's fair," he said, "I shall lose several thousand crowns." The elector had only one means to make him stay, namely, to count out the sum to him.
As the restoration of the Imperial Chamber necessitated my return to Spires to watch my father's lawsuit, I wrote to Pomerania to be dispensed from following the emperor. This is the answer from our princes.