602 THE EEFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
and Beza, who numbers Coclileeus among the monsters of the animal kingdom. ^
After the close of the Council of Trent, Martin Chemnitz, the leading divine of the Lutheran Church after the death of Melanchthon, wrote his more elaborate Examen Concilii Ti'identini (1565-1573; second ed. 1585), which was for a long time a standard work in the Roman controversy.
§ 121. Against the G-erman Interim. 1549.
Interim Adultero-Gerinanum : Cui adjecta est vera Christiana pacificationis et ecclesim reformandie ratio., per Joannem Calvinum. Cavete a fermento Pharisceorum, 1549. Opera, VII. 541-674. — It was reprinted in Germany, and translated into French (1549) and Italian (1561). See Henry, II. 369 sqq.; III. Beilage, 211 sq. ; Dyer, 232 sq.
On the Interim, comp. the German Histories of Ranke (V. 25 sqq.) and Janssen (III. 625 sqq.), and the monograph of Ludwig Pastor (Rom. Cath.) : Die kirchlichen Reunionsbestrebungen wdhrend der Regierung Karls V. Freiburg, 1879, pp. 357 sqq.
Calvin's tract on the false German Interim is closely connected with his criticism of the Council of Trent. After defeating the Smalkaldian League, the Emperor imposed on the Protestants in Germany a compromise confession of faith to be used till the final decision of the General Council. It was drawn up by two Roman Catholic bishops, Pflug (an Erasmian) and Helding, with the aid of John Agricola, the chaplain of Elector Joachim II. of Brandenburg. Agricola was a vain, ambitious, and unreliable man, who had once been a secretary and table companion of Luther, but fell out with him and Melanchthon in the Antinomian controversy. He was suspected of having been bribed by the Catholics.^
The agreement was laid before the Diet of Auo-sbursf, and
1 Brevis et utilis zoographia Joh. Cochkei, 1549. Reprinted in Banni's Beza, I. 357-363.
" The Emperor presented him with fifty crowns ; King Ferdinand, with five hundred tlialer. Janssen, III. 625. Comp. G. Kawerau (a specialist in the history of the Lutheran Reformation), Johann Agricola von Eisleben, Berlin, 1881.
§ 1'21. AGAINST THE GERMAN INTElilM. 1549. 603
is called the Augsbuhg Interim. It was pioclainied, with ail earnest exhortation, by the Emperor, May 15, 1548. It comprehended the whole Roman Catholic system of doctrine and discipline, but in a mild and conciliatory form, and without an express condemnation of the Protestant views. The doctrine of justification was stated in substantial agreement with that of the Council of Trent. The seven sacraments, transubstantiation, the mass, the invocation of the saints, the authority of the pope, and all the important ceremonies, were to be retained. The only concession made to the Protestants was the use of the cup by the laity in the holy communion, and the permission for married priests to retain their wives. The arrangement suited the views of the Emperor, who, as Ranke remarks, wished to uphold the Catholic hierarchy as the basis of his power, and yet to make it possible for Protestants to be reconciled to him. It is very evident that the adoption of such a confession was a virtual surrender of the cause of the Reformation and would have ended in a triumph of the papacy.
The Interim was received with great indignation by the Protestants, and was rejected in Hesse, ducal Saxony, and the Northern cities, especially in Madgeburg, which became the headquarters of the irreconcilable Lutherans under the lead of Flacius. In Southern Germany it was enforced with great rigor by Spanish soldiers. More than four hundred pastors i*n Swabia and on the Rhine were expelled from their benefices for refusing the Interim, and wandered about with their families in poverty and misery. Among them was Brenz, the Reformer of Wiirtemburg, who fled to Basel, where he received a consolitary letter from Calvin (Nov. 5, 1548). Martin Bucer, with all his zeal for Christian union, was unwilling to make a compromise at the expense of his conscience, and fled from Strassburg to England, where he was appointed professor of divinity in the University of Cambridge.