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A conference took place at Anhausen, in Franconia, at which were present the Elector Frederick IV., from the Palatinate, the Palsgrave of Neuburg, two Margraves of Brandenburg, the Margrave of Baden, and the Duke John Frederick of Wirtemburg, Lutherans as well as Calvinists, who for themselves and their heirs entered into a close confederacy under the title of the Evangelical Union.
Jacobs writes: "It is one of the most important papers in the Halle 'Reports. The entire field is surveyed, the history of German immigration traced, and the religious condition of the immigrants described. The manner in which other denominations and the Swedish Lutherans are aided by foreign help is shown, and a very discouraging contrast is drawn.
The odium theologicum is ever hotter between sections of the same party which are divided by trifling differences, than between the open representatives of antagonist principles; and Anglicans and Lutherans, instead of joining hands across the Channel, endeavoured only to secure each a recognition of themselves at the expense of the other. The English plumed themselves on their orthodoxy.
The cardinals' hats, therefore, should be granted only when they were deserved, "when the Lutherans in Germany had been reduced to obedience, and Hungary had been recovered from the Turks." If this was acting, it was skilfully managed, and it deceived the eyes of the French ambassador.
In after times we also find that the Lutherans and Calvinists became greater witchburners than ever the Romanists had been: so deeply was the prejudice rooted. Every other point of belief was in dispute, but that was considered by every sect to be as well established as the authenticity of the Scriptures, or the existence of a God.
In the second place, there was the same feeling in England as we have already noted throughout all Europe that the clergy needed reform in morals and in manners. This view was shared not only by the comparatively insignificant group of heretical Lutherans, but likewise by a large proportion of the leading men who accounted themselves orthodox members of the Catholic Church.
Various substitutes were made for the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, the idea that in the Lord's Supper the bread and wine by the word of the priest are actually changed into the Body and Blood of Christ. The Lutherans maintained what they called consubstantiation, that Christ was with and in the bread and wine, as fire is in a hot iron, to borrow the metaphor of Luther himself.
I had no positive Anglican theory. I was very nearly a pure Protestant. Lutherans had a sort of theology, so had Calvinists; I had none. However, this pure Protestantism, to which I was gradually left, was really a practical principle. It was a strong, though it was only a negative ground, and it still had great hold on me.
The Churchmen of England, the Lutherans of Germany, the Calvinists of Geneva, Scotland, and New England rivalled the most bigoted Roman Catholics in their severities. "During the seventeenth century, 40,000 persons are said to have been put to death for witchcraft in England alone. The Puritans in New England signalised themselves by their merciless severity towards wizards and witches.
By the statute 38 George III., chapter 4, passed in 1798, the privilege of doing so was accorded to ministers of "The Church of Scotland, or Lutherans or Calvinists;" but it was hedged about with cumbrous restrictions which must have been felt as humiliating and unnecessary.
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