would not even consent to see them lest he should be compromised, and Lutheran pulpits resounded with denunciations of the Sacramentarians, as Zwingli and his supporters now began to be called. Zwingli himself, so soon as he read the Confession, addressed to Charles a statement of his own belief, in which he threw prudence and fear to the winds. He retracted the concessions he had made to Lutheran views at Marburg, and asserted his differences from the Catholic Church in such plain terms that Melanchthon said he was mad. The cities of Upper Germany were not prepared for such extremities; but, cut off from the Lutheran communion, they were compelled to draw up a confession of their own, which was named the Tetrapolitana from the four cities, Strassburg, Constance, Lindau, and Memmingen, which signed it. It was mainly the work of Bucer, was completed on July 11, and, while Zwinglian in essence, made a serious attempt to approach the doctrines of Wittenberg.
It appears to have been the hope of the Protestants, and probably of Charles also, that the Emperor would be able to make himself the mediator between the Lutherans and Catholics, and to effect an agreement by inducing each side to make concessions. But for the moment the Catholics distrusted Charles more than the Protestants did. They had secular as well as ecclesiastical grievances. They denounced the treaties concluded in Italy as wanting their concurrence; they were horrified at the example set by Charles in secularising the see of Utrecht, and they refused to confirm the Pope's grant of ecclesiastical revenues to Ferdinand; while the orthodox Wittelsbachs were moving heaven and earth to prevent the election of Charles' brother as King of the Romans. They were thus by no means disposed to place themselves in the Emperor's hands; they insisted rather that they should determine the Empire's policy, and that Charles should merely execute their decrees; and, lacking the Emperor's broader outlook, they were less inclined to make concessions to peace. It was the growing conviction that Charles was a helpless tool in the hands of their enemies which caused a revulsion of the Protestant feeling in his favour.
Yet the Catholics were not all in favour of extreme courses, and either Melanchthon's moderation or the effect of twelve years' criticism produced some modification of Catholic dogma, as expressed in the Confutation of the Confession drawn up by Eck, Faber, Cochlaeus, and others, and presented on August 3. The doctrine of good works M'as so defined as to guard against the previous popular abuses of it; and in other respects there were signs of the process of purifying Catholic dogma which had commenced at the Congress of Ratisbon in 1524 and was completed at the Council of Trent. But these concessions were too slight to satisfy even Melanchthon; and the Protestant Princes were not frightened into submission by the threats of Charles that unless they returned to the Catholic fold he would proceed against them as became the protector and steward of the Church.
