body and blood of Christ were
spiritually present with that bread and wine. This doctrine, which they
called _consubstantiation_, they adopted in antagonism to the papal
doctrine of _transubstantiation_, which was that the bread and wine were
actually transformed into, and became the real body and blood of Christ.

The difference between the Calvinists and the Lutherans, as we have
before mentioned, was that, while the former considered the bread and
wine in the sacraments as _representing_ the body and the blood of
Christ, the latter considered the body and the blood as spiritually
present in the consecrated elements. This trivial difference divided
brethren who were agreed upon all the great points of Christian faith,
duty and obligation. It is melancholy, and yet instructive to observe,
through the course of history, how large a proportion of the energies of
Christians have been absorbed in contentions against each other upon
shadowy points of doctrine, while a world has been perishing in
wickedness. The most efficient men in the Church on earth, have had
about one half of their energies paralyzed by contentions with their own
Christian brethren. It is so now. The most energetic men, in pleading
the cause of Christ, are often assailed even more unrelentingly by
brethren who differ with them upon some small point of doctrine, than by
a hostile world.

Human nature, even when partially sanctified, is frail indeed. The
Elector of Saxony was perhaps a good man, but he was a weak one. He was
a zealous Lutheran, and was shocked that a Calvinist, a man who held the
destructive error that the bread and wine only _represented_ the body
and the blood of Christ, should be raised to the throne of Bohemia, and
thus become the leader of the Protestant party. The Elector of Saxony
and the Elector of the Palatine had also been naturally rivals, as
neighbors, and possessors of about equal rank and power. Though the
Calvinists, to conciliate the Lutherans, had offered the throne to the
Elector of Saxony, and he had declined it, as too perilous a post for
him to occupy, still he was weakly jealous of his rival who had assumed
that post, and was thus elevated above him to the kingly dignity.

Ferdinand understood all this, and shrewdly availed himself of it. He
plied the elector with arguments and promises, assuring him that the
points in dispute were political merely and not religious; that he had
no intention of opposing the Protes