with these and other modifications, is flatly denied, in these words:  “It is unjustly charged against our churches, that they have abolished the mass,” (Art.  XXIV., p. 21 of the Platform,) a thing never charged against them in reference to the eucharist, for from the very beginning of the Reformation, they charged the Papists with having mutilated it, and claimed the restoration of the cup also to the laity.

5.  In a letter of September 20, 1530, addressed to Justus Jonas, one of the theologians at the diet, Luther thus expresses himself:  “For, what else do our opponents, (the Papists,) presume to propose, than that they shall not yield a hairsbreadth, but that we not only yield on the subject of the canon, the mass, the one kind, (in the eucharist,) celibacy, (of the clergy,) and jurisdiction (of the bishops); but shall also admit that they have taught the truth, and acted properly in all things, and were falsely accused by us.” [Note 15] Here the mass is again distinguished from the eucharist in one kind.  He then adds:  “If we will get at it (yielding to the Papists,) let us yield only the canon, and the closet masses; and either of these two is sufficient fully to deny our doctrine and to confirm theirs.”  The canon was that part of the ritual of the mass which contained the forms of transubstantiation, which were positively rejected by the reformers, the closet masses are rejected in the Augsburg Confession; but Luther says nothing against the public mass, qualified as it is in the Confession.

6.  In his Exhortation to the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, published in 1530, he says:  “If the Papists do, as usual, quibble at my language, and boast that I myself here make a sacrifice in the sacrament, although I have hitherto contended that the mass is no sacrifice; then you shall answer thus:  I make neither the mass nor the sacrament a sacrifice, ("Ich mache weder Messe noch Sacrament zum opfer,”) but the remembrance of Christ,” [Note 16] &c.  Here the two are distinguished as clearly as language can discriminate between two separate objects, and even placed in antithesis to one another:  and let it be remembered, that all the examples are taken from works published either before or in the very year in which the Augsburg Confession was written.  A few years later, in 1534, in a letter to a friend, in which he inveighs strongly against the closet masses and the perverted order or arrangements of the mass, (verkehrte ordnung der Messe,) and against the Romish mass in general:  “I wish, and would very gladly see and hear, that the two words mass and sacrament were considered by every one as being as far apart as light and darkness, yea, as the devil and God.  For they (the Papists) must themselves confess, that mass dues not signify the reception of the sacrament as Christ instituted it; but the reception of the sacrament they do, (and