e Lutherans in June, 1557, at
Frankfort-on-the-Main. June 30 a resolution was adopted to the effect
that all controversies among the Lutherans be suspended, and the
Romanists be told at the prospective colloquy that the Lutherans were
all agreed in the chief points of doctrine. Against this resolution
Nicholas Gallus and several others entered their protest.
Self-evidently, also Flacius and his adherents who had always held that
the controverted issues involved essential points of doctrine, could not
assent to the resolution without violating their conscience, and denying
their convictions and the truth as they saw it. Such being the
situation, the wise thing for the Lutherans to do would have been to
decline the colloquy. For, since also Ducal Saxony with its stanch
Lutherans was held to attend it, a public humiliating clash of the
Lutherans was unavoidable.

Before the formal opening of the colloquy, the Thuringian delegates at
Worms received a letter from Flacius, dated August 9, 1557 in which he
admonished them to make a determined confession, and to induce the other
Lutheran theologians to reject the Interim, Adiaphorism, Majorism,
Osiandrism and Zwinglianism. This was necessary, said Flacius, because
the Romanists would, no doubt exploit the concessions made in the
Leipzig Interim and the dissensions existing among the Lutherans. (_C.
R._ 9, l99ff.). Flacius expressed the same views in an opinion to the
dukes of Saxony, who, in turn, gave corresponding instructions to their
delegates in Worms. In a letter dated August 20, 1557 Duke John
Frederick said it was impossible that, in defending the _Augsburg
Confession_ against the Romanists, the Lutherans could stand as one man
and speak as with one mouth (_fuer einen Mann und also ex uno ore_), if
they had not previously come to an agreement among themselves and
condemned the errors. For otherwise the Papists would be able to defeat
the Lutherans with their own sword, _i.e._, their own polemical
publications. (231.) On the same day, August 20, 1557, Flacius repeated
his sentiments and admonitions in letters to Schnepf, Moerlin, and
Sarcerius. (232ff.)

In a meeting of the Lutheran theologians at Worms, held September 5, Dr.
Basilius Monner, professor of jurisprudence at Jena made a motion in
keeping with his instructions and the admonitions of Flacius, whereupon
Erhard Schnepf, professor in Jena, read a list of the errors that ought
to be rejected. But the majority,