e by Lutheran princes as well as by theologians,
especially the theologians who had not participated in the
controversies, but for all that were no less concerned about the
maintenance of pure Lutheranism and no less opposed to a peace at the
expense of the divine truth than the others. As early as 1553 Flacius
and Gallus published their _Provokation oder Erbieten der adiaphorischen
Sachen halben, auf Erkenntnis und Urteil der Kirchen_. In this Appeal
they urged that ten or twenty competent men who hitherto had not
participated in the public controversy be appointed to decide the chief
differences between themselves and the Interimists. In the two following
years Flacius and Gallus continued their endeavors to interest
influential men in Saxony and other places for their plan. Melanchthon
and his Wittenberg colleagues, however, maintained silence in the
matter.

At the behest of the dukes of Thuringia, Amsdorf, Stolz, Aurifaber,
Schnepf, and Strigel met at Weimar in the early part of 1553 to discuss
the conditions of peace. Opposed as they were to a peace by agreeing to
disagree or by ignoring the differences and past contentions, they
demanded that synergism, Majorism, adiaphorism, as also the doctrines of
Zwingli, Osiander, and Schwenckfeldt, be publicly rejected by the
Wittenbergers. (Preger 2, 4. 7.)

268. Pacific Overtures of Flacius.

Soon after the convention in Weimar, Gottschalk Praetorius, rector of
the school in Magdeburg, and Hubertus Languet from Burgundy (an intimate
friend of Melanchthon and a guest at his table, who later on maliciously
slandered Flacius) had an interview with Flacius, in which the latter
submitted the conditions on which peace might be established. However, a
letter written in this matter by Praetorius, in April, 1556, was not
answered by Melanchthon, who, moreover, insinuated that Flacius's object
merely was to kindle hatred. (_C. R._ 8, 794.)

In May, 1556, Flacius, continuing his peace efforts, forwarded to Paul
Eber his "Mild Proposals, _Linde Vorschlaege_, dadurch man gottselige
und notwendige friedliche Vergleichung machen koennte zwischen den
Wittenbergischen und Leipzigischen Theologen in causa Adiaphoristica und
den andern, so wider sie geschrieben haben." According to these
_Proposals_, Flacius demanded that, in a publication signed by the
theologians of both parties, the Pope be denounced as the true
Antichrist, the Augsburg Interim be rejected, the proposition: "Good
wo