had been abolished; and that preachers should promulgate no new doctrines.  The minority entered their protest.  They urged that the mass had been clearly proved to be contrary to the Word of God; that the Scriptures were the only certain rule of life; and declared their resolution to maintain the truths of the Old and New Testaments, regardless of traditions.  This Protest was sustained by powerful names—­John, Elector of Saxony; George, Margrave of Brandenburg; two Dukes of Brunswick; the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel; the Prince of Anhalt, and fourteen imperial cities, to which were soon added ten more.  Nothing can more decisively show than this the wonderful progress which the Reformation in so short a time had made.  From this Protest the reformers received the name of Protestants, which they have since retained.

The emperor, flushed with success, now resolved, with new energy, to assail the principles of the Reformation.  Leaving Spain he went to Italy, and met the pope, Clement VII., at Bologna, in February, 1530.  The pope and the emperor held many long and private interviews.  What they said no one knows.  But Charles V., who was eminently a sagacious man, became convinced that the difficulty had become far too serious to be easily healed, that men of such power had embraced the Lutheran doctrines that it was expedient to change the tone of menace into one of respect and conciliation.  He accordingly issued a call for another diet to meet in April, 1530, at the city of Augsburg in Bavaria.

“I have convened,” he wrote, “this assembly to consider the difference of opinion on the subject of religion.  It is my intention to hear both parties with candor and charity, to examine their respective arguments, to correct and reform what requires to be corrected and reformed, that the truth being known, and harmony established, there may, in future, be only one pure and simple faith, and, as all are disciples of the same Jesus, all may form one and the same Church.”

These fair words, however, only excited the suspicions of the Protestants, which suspicions subsequent events proved to be well founded.  The emperor entered Augsburg in great state, and immediately assumed a dictatorial air, requiring the diet to attend high mass with him, and to take part in the procession of the host.

“I will rather,” said the Marquis of Brandenburg to the emperor, “instantly offer my head to the executioner, than renounce the gospel and approve idolatry.  Christ did not institute the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to be carried in pomp through the streets, nor to be adored by the people.  He said, ‘Take, eat;’ but never said, ’Put this sacrament into a vase, carry it publicly in triumph, and let the people prostrate themselves before it.’”