A holy zeal for the purity and unity of doctrine is not at all
incompatible, rather always and of necessity connected with an earnest
desire for peace; not, indeed, a peace at any price, but a truly
Christian and godly peace, a peace consistent with the divine truth.
Also in the loyal Lutherans, who during the controversies after Luther's
death faithfully adhered to their Confessions, the fervent desire for
such a godly peace grew in proportion as the dissensions increased.
While Calvinists and Crypto-Calvinists were the advocates of a
unionistic compromise, true Lutherans everywhere stood for a union based
on the truth as taught by Luther and contained in the Lutheran
Confessions. Though yearning for peace and praying that the
controversies might cease, they were determined that the Lutheran Church
should never be contaminated with indifferentism or unionism, nor with
any teaching deviating in the least from the divine truth.
As a result, earnest and repeated efforts to restore unity and peace
were made everywhere by Lutheran princes as well as by theologians,
especially the theologians who had not participated in the
controversies, but for all that were no less concerned about the
maintenance of pure Lutheranism and no less opposed to a peace at the
expense of the divine truth than the others. As early as 1553 Flacius
and Gallus published their _Provokation oder Erbieten der adiaphorischen
Sachen halben, auf Erkenntnis und Urteil der Kirchen_. In this Appeal
they urged that ten or twenty competent men who hitherto had not
participated in the public controversy be appointed to decide the chief
differences between themselves and the Interimists. In the two following
years Flacius and Gallus continued their endeavors to interest
influential men in Saxony and other places for their plan. Melanchthon
and his Wittenberg colleagues, however, maintained silence in the
matter.
At the behest of the dukes of Thuringia, Amsdorf, Stolz, Aurifaber,
Schnepf, and Strigel met at Weimar in the early part of 1553 to discuss
the conditions of peace. Opposed as they were to a peace by agreeing to
disagree or by ignoring the differences and past contentions, they
demanded that synergism, Majorism, adiaphorism, as also the doctrines of
Zwingli, Osiander, and Schwenckfeldt, be publicly rejected by the
Wittenbergers. (Preger 2, 4. 7.)