All the Crypto-Calvinistic publications of the Wittenberg and Leipzig
Philippists were duly unmasked by the Lutherans outside of Electoral
Saxony, especially in Northern Germany. Their various opinions were
published at Jena, 1572, under the title: "_Unanimous Confession
(Einhelliges Bekenntnis) of Many Highly Learned Theologians and
Prominent Churches_ 1. concerning the New Catechism of the New
Wittenbergers, and 2. concerning their _New Foundation (Grundfeste)_,
also 3. concerning their _New Confession (Consensus Dresdensis)_,
thereupon adopted." However, all this and the repeated warnings that
came from every quarter outside of his own territories, from Lutheran
princes as well as theologians, do not seem to have made the least
impression on Elector August. Yet he evidently was, and always intended
to be a sincere, devoted, true-hearted, and singleminded Lutheran. When,
for example, in 1572 Beza, at the instance of the Wittenberg
Philippists, dedicated his book against Selneccer to Elector August, the
latter advised him not to trouble him any further with such writings, as
he would never allow any other doctrine in his territory than that of
the _Augsburg Confession_.
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.