However, blind and credulous as he was, and filled with prejudice and suspicion against Flacius and the Jena theologians generally, whom he, being the brother of the usurper Maurice, instinctively feared as possibly also political enemies, Elector August was easily duped and completely hypnotized, as it were, by the men surrounding him, who led him to believe that they, too, were in entire agreement with Luther and merely opposed the trouble-breeding Flacians, whom they never tired of denouncing as zealots, fanatics, bigots, wranglers, barkers, alarmists, etc. While in reality they rejected the doctrine that the true body and blood of Christ is truly and essentially present in the Holy Supper, these Crypto-Calvinists pretended (and Elector August believed them) that they merely objected to a local presence and to a Capernaitic eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ in the Holy Supper. And while in reality they clearly repudiated Luther's teaching, according to which the divine attributes (omnipotence, omnipresence, etc.) are communicated to the human nature of Christ, they caused the Elector to believe that they merely opposed a delusion of the "Ubiquitists," who, they said, taught that the body of Christ was locally extended over the entire universe. This crass localism, they maintained, was the teaching of their opponents, while they themselves faithfully adhered to the teachings of Luther and Philip, and, in general, were opposed only to the exaggerations and excrescences advocated by the bigoted Flacians. (Walther, 43.)
Such was the manner in which the Elector allowed himself to be duped by the Philippists who surrounded him,—men who gradually developed the art of dissimulation to premeditated deceit, falsehood, and perjury. Even the Reformed theologian Simon Stenius, a student at Wittenberg during the Crypto-Calvinistic period, charges the Wittenbergers with dishonesty and systematic dissimulation. The same accusation was raised 1561 by the jurist Justus Jonas in his letters to Duke Albrecht of Prussia. (Gieseler 3, 2, 249.) And evidently believing that Elector August could be fooled all the time, they became increasingly bold in their theological publications, and in their intrigues as well.
To all practical purposes the University of Wittenberg was already Calvinized. Calvinistic books appeared and were popular. Even the work of a Jesuit against the book of Jacob Andreae on the Majesty of the Person of Christ was published at Wittenberg. The same was done with a treatise of Beza, although, in order to deceive the public, the title-page gave Geneva as the place of publication. Hans Lufft, the Wittenberg printer, later declared that during this time he did not know how to dispose of the books of Luther which he still had in stock, but that, if he had printed twenty or thirty times as many Calvinistic books, he would have sold all of them very rapidly.
Even Providence seemed to bless and favor the plans of the plotters. For when on March 3, 1573, Duke John William, the patron and protector of the faithful Lutherans, died, Elector August became the guardian of his two sons. And fanaticized by his advisers, the Elector, immediately upon taking hold of the government in Ducal Saxony, banished Wigand, Hesshusius, Caspar Melissander [born 1540; 1571 professor of theology in Jena; 1578 superintendent in Altenburg; died 1591] Rosinus [born 1520; 1559 superintendent in Weimar 1574 superintendent in Regensburg; died 1586], Gernhard, court-preacher in Weimar, and more than 100 preachers and teachers of Ducal Saxony. The reason for this cruel procedure was their refusal to adopt the Corpus Philippicum, and because they declined to promise silence with respect to the Philippists.
214. "Exegesis Perspicua."
In 1573, the Calvinization of Electoral and Ducal Saxony was, apparently, an accomplished fact. But the very next year marked the ignominious downfall and the unmasking of the dishonest Philippists. For in this year appeared the infamous Exegesis, which finally opened the eyes of Elector August. Its complete title ran: "Exegesis Perspicua et ferme Integra Controversiae de Sacra Coena—Perspicuous and Almost Complete Explanation of the Controversy Concerning the Holy Supper." The contents and make-up of the book as well as the secret methods adopted for its circulation clearly revealed that its purpose was to deal a final blow to Lutheranism in order to banish it forever from Saxony. Neither the author, nor the publisher, nor the place and date of publication were anywhere indicated in the book. The paper bore Geneva mark and the lettering was French. The prima facie impression was that it came from abroad.
Before long, however, it was established that the Exegesis had been published in Leipzig by the printer Voegelin, who at first also claimed its authorship. But when the impossibility of this was shown, Voegelin, in a public hearing, stated that Joachim Curaeus of Silesia, a physician who had left Saxony and died 1573, was the author of the book. Valentin Loescher, however, relates (Historia Motuum 3, 195) that probably Pezel and the son-in-law of Melanchthon, Peucer, had a hand in it; that the Crypto-Calvinist Esram Ruedinger [born 1523, son-in-law of Camerarius, professor of physics in Wittenberg, died 1591] was its real author; that it was printed at Leipzig in order to keep the real originators of it hidden, and that, for the same purpose, the Silesian Candidate of Medicine Curaeus had taken the responsibility of its authorship upon himself. (Tschackert, 547.)
Self-evidently, the Wittenberg theologians disclaimed any knowledge of, or any connection with, the origin of the Exegesis. However, they were everywhere believed to share its radical teachings, and known to have spread it among the students of the university, and suspected also of having before this resorted to tactics similar to those employed in the Exegesis. As early as 1561, for example, rhymes had secretly been circulated in Wittenberg, the burden of which was that faith alone effects the presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper, and that the mouth receives nothing but natural bread. One of these ran as follows: "Allein der Glaub' an Jesum Christ Schafft, dass er gegenwaertig ist, Und speist uns mit sei'm Fleisch und Blut Und sich mit uns einigen tut. Der Mund empfaeht natuerlich Brot, Die Seel' aber speist selber Gott." (Walther, 46.) Of course, the purpose of such dodgers was to prepare the way for Calvinism. And on the very face of it, the Exegesis Perspicua was intended to serve similar secret propaganda.
The chief difference between the preceding publications of the Philippists and the Exegesis was that here they came out in clear and unmistakable language. The sacramental union, the oral eating and drinking (manducatio oralis), and the eating and drinking of the wicked, which before were passed by in silence, are dealt with extensively and repudiated. The Exegesis teaches: The body of Christ is inclosed in heaven; in the Holy Supper it is present only according to its efficacy, there is no union of the body of Christ with the bread and wine; hence, there neither is nor can be such a thing as oral eating and drinking or eating and drinking of unbelievers. The "ubiquity," as the Exegesis terms the omnipresence of Christ's human nature, is condemned as Eutychian heresy. The Exegesis declared: "In the use of the bread and wine the believers by faith become true and living members of the body of Christ, who is present and efficacious through these symbols, as through a ministry inflaming and renewing our hearts by His Holy Spirit. The unbelieving, however, do not become partakers, or koinonoi, but because of their contempt are guilty of the body of Christ." (Seeberg, Grundriss 146.)
After fulsome praise of the Reformed, whose doctrine, the Exegesis says, is in agreement with the symbols of the ancient Church, and who as to martyrdom surpass the Lutherans, and after a corresponding depreciation of Luther, who in the heat of the controversy was said frequently to have gone too far, the Exegesis recommends that the wisest thing would be to follow the men whom God had placed at the side of Luther, and who had spoken more correctly than Luther. Following Melanchthon, all might unite in the neutral formula, "The bread is the communion of the body of Christ," avoiding all further definition regarding the ubiquity [the omnipresence of Christ's human nature] and the eating of the true body of Christ, until a synod had definitely decided these matters. (Tschackert, 547.)