664 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
with the Turks and Papists than with Swiss Christians. He called them " apes of Luther." He triumphantly vindicated against misrepresentations and objections his doctrine of the spiritual real presence of Christ, and the sealing communication of the life-giving virtue of his body in heaven to the believer through the poAver of the Holy Spirit.
He might have defended his doctrine even more effectually if he had restrained his wrath and followed the brotherly advice of Bullinger, and even Farel, who exhorted him not to imitate the violence of his opponent, to confine himself to the thing, and to spare the person. But he wrote to Farel (August, 1557) : " With regard to Westphal and the rest it was difficult for me to control my temper and to follow your advice. You call those ' brethren ' who, if that name be offered to them by us, do not only reject, but execrate it. And how ridiculous should we appear in bandying the name of brother with those who look upon us as the worst of heretics." ^
§ 133. Calvin and the Augsburg Confession. Melanehthon's Position in the Second Eucharistic Controversy.
Comp. Henry, III. 335-339 and Beilage, pp. 102-110; the works on the Augsburg Confession, and the biographies of Melanchthon.
During the progress of this controversy both parties frequently appealed to the Augsburg Confession and to Melanchthon. They were both right and both wrong; for there are two editions of the Confession, representing the earlier and the later theories of its author on the Lord's Supper. The original Augsburg Confession of 1530, in the tenth article, teaches Luther's doctrine of the real presence so clearly and strongly that even the Roman opponents did not object to it.^ But from the time of the Wittenberg Con-
1 Opera, XVI. 552.
2 The Catholica Hefutatio Augustance Confessionis of Drs. Eck, Taber, and Cochlaeus says: " Decimus articnlus [of the Augsburg Confession] in verbis nihil qffendit si modo credant [the Lutlicran signers], sid) qnalihet specie integrum Christum esse."
§ 133. CALVIN AND THE AUGSBUEG CONFESSION. 665
cordia in 1536, or even eaiiier,i Melanclithon began to change his view on the real presence as well as his view on predestination and free-will ; in the former he approached Calvin, in the latter he departed from him. He embodied the former change in the Altered Confession of 1540, without official authority, yet in good faith, as the author of the document, and in the conviction that he represented public sentiment, since Luther himself had moderated his opposition to the Swiss by assenting to tlie Wittenberg Concordia.^ The altered edition was made the basis of negotiations with the Romanists at the Colloquies of Worms and Ratisbon in 1541, and at the later Colloquies in 1546 and 1557. It was printed (with the title and preface of the Invariata) in the first collection of the symbolical books of the Lutheran Church (^Corpus DoctrincB Philippicuiri) in 1559; it was expressly approved by the Lutheran princes at the Convention of Naumburg in 1561, after Melanchthon's death, as an improved modification and authentic interpretation of the Confession, and was adhered to by the Melanchthonians and the Reformed even after the adoption of the Book of Concord (1580). The text in the two editions is as follows : —
Ed. 1530. Ed. 1540.
" De CcEiia Domini docent, quod cor- " De Caena Domini docent, quod
pus et sanguis Ch7-isti vere adsint cum pane et vino vere exhibeantur
[the German text adds : unter der Ge- corpus et sanguis Christi vescentibus in
stalt des Brots und Weins'\, et distrib- Ccena Domini." UANTUR i-escentibus in Ccena Domini;
ET IMPROBANT SECUS DOCENTES." [In
the German text: " Derhalhen ivird auch die Gegenlehre verworfen ."'\
1 Comp. his letters to Schnepf, Agricola, and Brenz, from the years 1534 and 1535; Matthes, Leben Melanchthons , p. 349; C. Schmidt, Philipp Melanclithon, pp. 580 sqq.
- Luther did not object to the change. When he broke out more fiercely than ever against the Swiss, in his "Short Confession on the Holy Sacrament " (1544), Melanchthon, in a letter to Bullinger, called this book not unjustly " alrocissimum scriptum." See vol. VI. 054 sq.