Campeggio, now certain of triumphing by the sword, disdainfully handed this paper to Cochlœus, who hastened to refute it. It is hard to say whether Melancthon or Campeggio was the most infatuated. God did not permit an arrangement that would have enslaved his Church.
Charles passed the whole of the 4th and the morning of the 5th August in consultation with the Ultramontane party. "It will never be by discussion that we shall come to an understanding," said some; "and if the Protestants do not submit voluntarily, it only remains for us to compel them." They nevertheless decided, on account of the Refutation, to adopt a middle course. During the whole of the diet, Charles pursued a skilful policy. At first he refused everything, hoping to lead away the princes by violence; then he conceded a few unimportant points, under the impression that the Protestants having lost all hope, would esteem so much the more the little he yielded to them. This was what he did again under the present circumstances. In the afternoon of the 5th, the Count-palatine announced that the Emperor would give them a copy of the Refutation, but on these conditions; namely, that the Protestants should not reply, that they should speedily agree with the Emperor, and that they would not print or communicate to any one the Refutation that should be confided to them.[694]
This communication excited murmurs among the Protestants. "These conditions," said they all, "are inadmissible."—"The Papists present us with their paper," added the Chancellor Brück, "as the fox offered a thin broth to his gossip the stork."
The savoury broth upon a plate by Reynard was served up,
But Mistress Stork, with her long beak, she could not get a sup.[695]
STORMY MEETING.
"If the Refutation," continued he, "should come to be known without our participation (and how can we prevent it?), we shall be charged with it as a crime. Let us beware of accepting so perfidious an offer.[696] We already possess in the notes of Camerarius several articles of this paper, and if we omit any point, no one will have the right to reproach us with it."
On the next day (6th August) the Protestants declared to the diet that they preferred declining the copy thus offered to them, and appealed to God and to his Majesty.[697] They thus rejected all that the Emperor proposed to them, even what he considered as a favour.
Agitation, anger, and affright, were manifested on every branch of that august assembly.[698] This reply of the Evangelicals was war—was rebellion. George of Saxony, the Princes of Bavaria, all the violent adherents of Rome, trembled with indignation; there was a sudden, an impetuous movement, an explosion of murmurs and of hatred; and it might have been feared that the two parties would have come to blows in the very presence of the Emperor, if Archbishop Albert, the Elector of Brandenburg, and the Dukes of Brunswick, Pomerania, and Mecklenburg, rushing between them, had not conjured the Protestants to put an end to this deplorable combat, and not drive the Emperor to extremities.[699] The diet separated, their hearts filled with emotion, apprehension, and trouble.
RESOLUTIONS OF THE CONSISTORY.
Never had the diet proposed such fatal alternatives. The hopes of agreement, set forth in the edict of convocation, had only been a deceitful lure: now the mask was thrown aside; submission or the sword—such was the dilemma offered to the Reformation. All announced that the day of tentatives was passed, and that they were beginning one of violence.