6.  In a document, which Melancthon prepared for a friend of the chancellor of the bishop of Luettich, in which he states how far they yielded, and also the points in which they could not agree, we find the following:  “Of the two kinds.—­Here we excused those (the laity,) who receive one kind alone (that is, merely the bread in the eucharist), for as they do not distribute the sacraments, they have to receive the sacrament as it is given to them.” [Note 24] “Of the mass.—­In regard to the mass we have already given our reply:  namely, that our party retain the substantials (substantalia,) and principal parts of the mass, so far as the consecration is concerned, &c.” [Note 25] “The mass is not a work which, when applied to others, merits grace for them ex opere operato; but according to the confession of the whole church, the Lord’s Supper is the sacrament, through which grace is offered to him that receives it, which grace he also really receives, but not by the more external act, but through faith, when he is certain that, in it., grace and pardon of sins are offered.” [Note 26]

III.  We will add a few short extracts from other reformers, written at the time of the Diet, to confirm our position that they also made a distinction between the mass and the eucharist, and that by the former they meant that performance of the priest alone at the altar, which preceded the communion.

1. Aurifaber, who was a particular personal friend of Luther, and was present at his death.  In his account of the incidents of Luther and his doctrines in the year 1530, speaking of the special committee which was appointed on the 16th of August, consisting of seven members on each side, he remarks:  [Note 27] “These assembled and took into consideration the Augsburg Confession of the Protestant States, deliberating on one article after another, and the first day agreed upon eleven articles.  The second day they continued their negotiations and agreed toll [sic] to twenty-one articles.  But on the articles concerning the mass, marriage of priests, the Lord’s Supper, monastic vows and the jurisdiction of the bishops, &c., they could not agree and remained at variance.”  Here the mass and the Lord’s Supper are distinctly classed as different topics.

2. Spalatin, one of the theologians who attended the Elector to Augsburg, in his narrative of what occurred during the diet, giving a brief abstract of the contents of the Augsburg Confession, epitomises the, Xth Article thus:  Of the Holy Sacrament of the true body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament of the altar; and the XXIV Article, “of the Mass, how it is celebrated amongst us, and the reason why closet masses have been rejected by us.”  Here again, who does not see that the two are represented as distinct?

IV.  We shall close this cumulative mass of evidence for the distinction between the terms mass and eucharist or Lord’s supper, at the time of the diet of Augsburg, by an extract from the professed refutation of the Augsburg Confession, prepared by the papists during the diet; from which it will be evident, not only that they make this distinction themselves, which no one denies, but that they understood the Augsburg Condition as making it also.