ation, I do not fall away from the truth of His almighty will which
His Word has revealed to me, and which I know to be the truth. For such
is the comforting and also the terrible word of God: 'Whosoever
therefore shall confess Me before men, him will I confess also before My
Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny Me before men, him
will I also deny before My Father which is in heaven,' If I should
acknowledge and adopt the Interim as Christian and godly, I would have
to condemn and deny against my own conscience, knowingly and
maliciously, the Augsburg Confession, and whatever I have heretofore
held and believed concerning the Gospel of Christ, and approve with my
mouth what I regard in my heart and conscience as altogether contrary
to the holy and divine Scriptures. This, O my God in heaven, would
indeed be misusing and cruelly blaspheming Thy holy name,... for which I
would have to pay all too dearly with my soul. For this is truly the sin
against the Holy Ghost concerning which Christ says that it shall never
be forgiven, neither in this nor in the world to come, _i.e._, in
eternity." (Walther, 16.)

The Emperor was small enough to punish the heroic refusal and bold
confession of the Elector by increasing the severity of his
imprisonment. For now he was deprived of Luther's writings and even of
the Bible. But the Elector, who drew the line of submission at his
conscience and faith, declared, "that they were able indeed to deprive
him of the books, but could not tear out of his heart what he had
learned from them." And when Musculus and the Lutheran preachers of
Augsburg whom the Emperor had banished because of their refusal to
introduce the Interim, took leave of the Elector, the latter said:
"Though the Emperor has banished you from the realm, he has not banished
you from heaven. Surely, God will find some other country where you may
preach His Word." (Jaekel. 164.)

124. Melanchthon's Attitude toward the Interim.

In the beginning, Melanchthon, too, assumed an attitude of defiance over
against the Augsburg Interim. Especially among his friends and in his
private letters he condemned it. In several letters, also to Elector
Maurice, he and his Wittenberg colleagues declared that they disapproved
of the document, and that the doctrine must not be denied, changed, nor
falsified. (_C. R._ 6, 874. 954.) April 25, 1548 he wrote to Camerarius
that the Interim corrupted the truth in the doctrine of justifica