The Diet at Regensburg, which adjourned in March of 1557, resolved that
a colloquy be held at Worms to bring about an agreement between the
Lutheran and Roman parties of the Empire. In order to prepare for the
colloquy, a convention was held by the Lutherans in June, 1557, at
Frankfort-on-the-Main. June 30 a resolution was adopted to the effect
that all controversies among the Lutherans be suspended, and the
Romanists be told at the prospective colloquy that the Lutherans were
all agreed in the chief points of doctrine. Against this resolution
Nicholas Gallus and several others entered their protest.
Self-evidently, also Flacius and his adherents who had always held that
the controverted issues involved essential points of doctrine, could not
assent to the resolution without violating their conscience, and denying
their convictions and the truth as they saw it. Such being the
situation, the wise thing for the Lutherans to do would have been to
decline the colloquy. For, since also Ducal Saxony with its stanch
Lutherans was held to attend it, a public humiliating clash of the
Lutherans was unavoidable.
Before the formal opening of the colloquy, the Thuringian delegates at
Worms received a letter from Flacius, dated August 9, 1557 in which he
admonished them to make a determined confession, and to induce the other
Lutheran theologians to reject the Interim, Adiaphorism, Majorism,
Osiandrism and Zwinglianism. This was necessary, said Flacius, because
the Romanists would, no doubt exploit the concessions made in the
Leipzig Interim and the dissensions existing among the Lutherans. (_C.
R._ 9, l99ff.). Flacius expressed the same views in an opinion to the
dukes of Saxony, who, in turn, gave corresponding instructions to their
delegates in Worms. In a letter dated August 20, 1557 Duke John
Frederick said it was impossible that, in defending the _Augsburg
Confession_ against the Romanists, the Lutherans could stand as one man
and speak as with one mouth (_fuer einen Mann und also ex uno ore_), if
they had not previously come to an agreement among themselves and
condemned the errors. For otherwise the Papists would be able to defeat
the Lutherans with their own sword, _i.e._, their own polemical
publications. (231.) On the same day, August 20, 1557, Flacius repeated
his sentiments and admonitions in letters to Schnepf, Moerlin, and
Sarcerius. (232ff.)
In a meeting of the Lutheran theologians at Worms, held September 5, Dr.
Basilius Monner, professor of jurisprudence at Jena made a motion in
keeping with his instructions and the admonitions of Flacius, whereupon
Erhard Schnepf, professor in Jena, read a list of the errors that ought
to be rejected. But the majority, led by Melanchthon, opposed the
motion. A breach seemed unavoidable. For Duke John Frederick had decided
that his theologians could not participate in the colloquy with
Lutherans who refused to reject errors conflicting with the _Augsburg
Confession_, nor recognize them as pure, faithful, loyal, and true
members and adherents of the _Augsburg Confession_, the _Apology_, and
the _Smalcald Articles_. (Preger 2, 67.) The imminent clash was
temporarily warded off by the concession on the part of the
Melanchthonians that the Thuringian theologians should be allowed freely
to express their opinion on any article discussed at the colloquy. At
the session held September 11, 1667, however, Bishop Michael Helding
demanded to know whether the Lutherans excluded the Zwinglians,
Calvinists, Osiandrists and Flacians (in the doctrine _de servo
arbitrio_) from the _Augsburg Confession_. The Jesuit Canisius plied the
Lutherans with similar questions: Whether they considered Osiander,
Major, and others adherents of the _Augustana_. Melanchthon declared
evasively that all evangelical delegates and pastors present were agreed
in the _Augsburg Confession_. As a result the Thuringians decided to
enter their protest. In a special meeting of the Lutherans the majority
threatened to exclude the Thuringians from all following sessions if
they dared to express their protest [containing the list of errors which
they rejected] before the Papists. The consequence was that the
Thuringians presented their protest in writing to the President, Julius
Pflug, and departed from Worms. The Romanists, who from the beginning
had been opposed to the colloquy, refused to treat with the remaining
Lutheran theologians, because they said, it was impossible to know who
the true adherents of the _Augsburg Confession_ were with whom,
according to the Regensburg Resolution, they were to deal.