When Melanchthon penned this confession only a few days had elapsed since Luther, in response to anxious letters received from Augsburg, had intervened with a firm hand and spoken out plainly against the concessions, and any further attempts at a diplomatic settlement.[1116]
In obedience to these directions Melanchthon began to withdraw more and more from the position he had taken up.
The most favourable proposals of his opponents were no longer entertained by him, and he even refused to fall in with the Emperor’s suggestion that Catholics living in Protestant territories should be left free to practise their religion. The Elector of Saxony’s divines, together with Melanchthon, in a memorandum to their sovereign, declared, on this occasion, that it was not sufficient for preachers to preach against the Mass, but that the Princes also must refuse to sanction it, and must forbid it. “Were we to say that Princes might abstain from forbidding it, and that preachers only were to declaim against it, one could well foresee what [small] effect the doctrine and denunciations of the preachers would have.”[1117] “The theologians,” remarks Janssen, “thus gave it distinctly to be understood that the new doctrine could not endure without the aid of the secular authority.”[1118] Hence, at that decisive moment, the Protestant Princes proclaimed intolerance of Catholics as much a matter of conscience as the confiscation of Church property. To the demand of the Emperor for restitution of the temporalities, the Princes, supported by the theologians, answered, that “they did not consider themselves bound to obey, since this matter concerned their conscience, against which there ran no prescription” (on the part of those who had been despoiled).[1119]
Thus, with Melanchthon’s knowledge and approval, the two principal factors in the whole Reformation, viz. intolerance and robbery of Church property, played their part even here at the turning-point of German history.
On his return from the Coburg to Wittenberg, as already described (p. 45 f.), Luther in his sermons showed how the Evangel which he proclaimed had to be preached, even at the expense of war and universal desolation: “The cry now is, that, had the Evangel not been preached, things would never have fallen out thus, but everything would have remained calm and peaceful. No, my friend, but things will improve; Christ speaks: ‘I have more things to say to you and to judge’; the fact is you must leave this preaching undisturbed, else there shall not remain to you one stick nor one stone upon another, and you may say: ‘These words are not mine, but the words of the Father.’” (cp. John viii. 26).[1120]
Yet, at the time of the Diet of Augsburg, Luther, for all his inexorable determination, was not unmindful of the temporal assistance promised by the Princes. He hinted at this with entire absence of reserve in a letter, not indeed to Melanchthon, who was averse to war, but to Spalatin: “Whatever the issue [of the Diet] may be, do not fear the victors and their craft. Luther is still at large and so is the Macedonian” (i.e. Philip of Hesse, whom Melanchthon had thus nicknamed after the warlike Philip of Macedonia). The “Macedonian” seemed to Luther a sort of “Ismael,” like unto Agar’s son, whom Holy Scripture had described as a wild man, whose hand is raised against all (Gen. xvi. 12). Luther was aware that Philip had quitted the Diet in anger and was now nursing his fury, as it were, in the desert. “He is at large,” he says in biblical language, “and thence may arise prudence to meet cunning and Ismael to oppose the enemy. Be strong and act like men. There was nothing to fear if they fought with blunted weapons.”[1121] Philip’s offer of a refuge in Hesse had helped to render Luther more defiant.[1122]
Exhortations such as these increased the unwillingness of his friends at Augsburg to reach any settlement by way of real concessions. All hopes of a peaceful outcome of the negotiations were thus doomed.
The Reichstagsabschied which finally, on November 19, 1530, brought Parliament to an end, witnessed to the hopelessness of any lasting peace; it required, however, that the bishoprics, monasteries, and churches which had been destroyed should be re-erected, and that the parishes still faithful to Catholicism should enjoy immunity under pain of the ban of the Empire.[1123]
Looking back at Melanchthon’s attitude at the Diet, we can understand the severe strictures of recent historians.
“We cannot get rid of the fact,” writes Georg Ellinger, Melanchthon’s latest Protestant biographer, “that, on the whole, his attitude at the Diet of Augsburg does not make a pleasing impression.” “That the apprehension of seeing the realisation of his principles frustrated led him to actions which can in no wise be approved, may be freely admitted.” It is true that Ellinger emphasises very strongly the “mitigating circumstances,” but he also remarks: “He had no real comprehension of the importance of the ecclesiastical forms involved [in his concessions], and this same lack of penetration served him badly even later. The method by which he attempted to put his plans into execution displays nothing of greatness but rather that petty slyness which seeks to overreach opponents by the use of ambiguous words.... He had recourse to this means in the hope of thus arriving more easily at his goal.” His “little tricks,” he proceeds, “at least delayed the business for a while,” to the manifest advantage of the Protestant cause.[1124] He candidly admits that Melanchthon, both before and after the Diet of Augsburg, owing to his weak and not entirely upright character, was repeatedly caught “having recourse to the subterfuges of a slyness not far removed from dissimulation.”[1125] In proof of this he instances the expedient invented by Melanchthon for the purpose of evading the conference with Zwingli at Marburg which was so distasteful to him. “The Elector was to behave as though Melanchthon had, in a letter, requested permission to attend such a conference, and had been refused it. Melanchthon would then allege this to the Landgrave of Hesse [who was urging him to attend the conference] ‘in order that His Highness may be pacified by so excellent an excuse.’”[1126] Ellinger, most impartially, also adduces other devices to which Melanchthon had recourse at a later date.[1127]