a_ were dismissed.

However, as stated, also in Electoral Saxony coercion was not employed.
Moreover, objections were listened to with patience, and time was
allowed for consideration. Indeed, in the name of the Elector every one
was admonished not to subscribe against his conscience. I. F. Mueller
says in his _Historico-Theological Introduction to the Lutheran
Symbols_: "At the Herzberg Convention, 1578, Andreae felt justified in
stating: 'I can truthfully say that no one was coerced to subscribe or
banished on that account. If this is not true, the Son of God has not
redeemed me with His blood; for otherwise I do not want to become a
partaker of the blood of Christ.' Pursuant to this declaration the
opponents were publicly challenged to mention a single person who had
subscribed by compulsion, but they were unable to do so. Moreover, even
the Nuernbergers, who did not adopt the _Formula of Concord_,
acknowledged that the signatures had been affixed without employment of
force." (115.) True, October 8, 1578, Andreae wrote to Chemnitz: "We
treated the pastors with such severity that a certain truly good man and
sincere minister of the church afterwards said to us in the lodging
that, when the matter was proposed so severely, his mind was seized with
a great consternation which caused him to think that he, being near
Mount Sinai, was hearing the promulgation of the Mosaic Law (_se animo
adeo consternato fuisse, cum negotium tam severiter proponeretur, ut
existimaret, se monti Sinai proximum legis Mosaicae promulgationem
audire_).... I do not believe that anywhere a similar severity has been
employed." (116.) But the term "severity" here employed does not mean
force or compulsion, but merely signifies religious seriousness and
moral determination to eliminate Crypto-Calvinism from the Lutheran
Church in Electoral Saxony. The spirit in which also Andreae desired
this matter to be conducted appears from his letter of November 20,
1579, to Count Wolfgang, in which he says: Although as yet some
ministers in his country had not subscribed to the _Formula_, he should
not make too much of that, much less press or persuade them; for whoever
did not subscribe spontaneously and with a good conscience should
abstain from subscribing altogether much rather than pledge himself with
word and hand when his heart did not concur--_denn wer es nicht mit
seinem Geist und gutem Gewissen tue, bleibe viel besser davon, als dass
er sich mit Wor