the article
on the Lord's Supper, he began to doubt their entire contention.
(Richard, 426.)

Among Lutherans generally the humiliating events in Saxony increased the
feeling of shame at the conditions prevailing within their Church as
well as the earnest desire for a genuine and lasting peace in the old
Lutheran truths. And now Elector August, who, despite his continued
animosity against Flacius, always wished to be a true Lutheran, but up
to 1574 had not realized that the Philippistic type of doctrine dominant
in his country departed from Luther's teaching, was determined to
satisfy this universal longing for unity and peace. Immediately after
the unmasking of the Philippists he took measures to secure the
restoration of orthodox Lutheranism in his own lands. At the same time
he placed himself at the head of the larger movement for the
establishment of religious peace among the Lutherans generally by the
elaboration and adoption of a doctrinal formula settling the pending
controversies. To restore unity and peace to the Lutheran Church, which
his own theologians had done so much to disturb, was now his uppermost
desire. He prosecuted the plan of pacification with great zeal and
perseverance. He also paid the heavy expenses (80,000 gulden), incurred
by the numerous conventions, etc. And when, in the interest of such
peace and unity, the theologians were engaged in conferences the pious
Elector and his wife were on their knees, asking God that He would crown
their labor with success.

The specific plan of the Elector was as appears from his rescript of
November 21, 1575, to his counselors, that pacific theologians,
appointed by the various Lutheran princes "meet in order to deliberate
how, by the grace of God, all [the existing various _corpora doctrinae_]
might be reduced to one _corpus_ which we all could adopt, and that this
book or _corpus doctrinae_ be printed anew and the ministers in the
lands of each ruler be required to be guided thereby." Before this
Elector August had requested Count George Ernest of Henneberg to take
the initiative in the matter. Accordingly, in November, 1575 Henneberg,
Duke Ludwig of Wuerttemberg and Margrave Carl of Baden agreed to ask a
number of theologians to give their opinion concerning the question as
to how a document might be prepared which would serve as a beginning to
bring about true Christian concord among the churches of the _Augsburg
Confession_. The theologians appointed