as without the Lutheran Church. Both Romanists and Calvinists
had long ago accustomed themselves to viewing the Lutheran Church as
moribund and merely to be preyed upon by others. Accordingly, when,
contrary to all expectations, our Church, united by the _Formula_, rose
once more to her pristine power and glory, it roused the envy and
inflamed the ire and rage of her enemies. Numerous protests against the
_Formula_, emanating chiefly from Reformed and Crypto-Calvinistic
sources, were lodged with Elector August and other Lutheran princes.
Even Queen Elizabeth of England sent a deputation urging the Elector not
to allow the promulgation of the new confession. John Casimir of the
Palatinate, also at the instigation of the English queen, endeavored to
organize the Reformed in order to prevent its adoption. Also later on
the Calvinists insisted that a general council (of course, participated
in by Calvinists and Crypto-Calvinists) should have been held to decide
on its formal and final adoption!

Numerous attacks on the _Formula of Concord_ were published 1578, 1579,
1581, and later, some of them anonymously. They were directed chiefly
against its doctrine of the real presence in the Lord's Supper, the
majesty of the human nature of Christ, and eternal election,
particularly its refusal to solve, either in a synergistic or in a
Calvinistic manner, the mystery presented to human reason in the
teaching of the Bible that God alone is the cause of man's salvation,
while man alone is the cause of his damnation. In a letter to Beza,
Ursinus, the chief author of the Heidelberg Catechism, shrewdly advised
the Reformed to continue accepting the _Augsburg Confession_, but to
agitate against the _Formula_. He himself led the Reformed attacks by
publishing, 1581, "_Admonitio Christiana de Libro Concordiae_, Christian
Admonition Concerning the Book of Concord," also called "_Admonitio
Neostadiensis_, Neustadt Admonition." Its charges were refuted in the
"Apology or Defense of the Christian Book of Concord--_Apologia oder
Verantwortung des christlichen Konkordienbuchs_, in welcher die wahre
christliche Lehre, so im Konkordienbuch verfasst, mit gutem Grunde
heiliger, goettlicher Schrift verteidiget, die Verkehrung aber und
Kalumnien, so von unruhigen Leuten wider gedachtes christliche Buch
ausgesprenget, widerlegt worden," 1583 (1582). Having been prepared by
command of the Lutheran electors, and composed by Kirchner, Selneccer,
and Chemn