rue
then, as in the days of our Saviour, that "the children of this world
are wiser in their generation than the children of light." Henry IV., of
France, who had not then embraced the Catholic faith, was anxious to
unite the two great parties of Lutherans and Calvinists, who were as
hostile to each other as they were to the Catholics. He sent an
ambassador to Germany to urge their union. He entreated them to call a
general synod, suggesting, that as they differed only on the single
point of the Lord's Supper, it would be easy for them to form some basis
of fraternal and harmonious action.

The Catholic church received the doctrine, so called, of
_transubstantiation_; that is, the bread and wine, used in the Lord's
Supper, is converted into the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ,
that it is no longer bread and wine, but real flesh and blood; and none
the less so, because it does not appear such to our senses. Luther
renounced the doctrine of transubstantiation, and adopted, in its stead,
what he called _consubstantiation_; that is, that after the consecration
of the elements, the body and blood of Christ are substantially _present
with_ (cum et sub,) with and under, the substance of the bread and wine.
Calvin taught that the bread and wine represented the real body and
blood of Christ, and that the body and blood were _spiritually present_
in the sacrament. It is a deplorable exhibition of the weakness of good
men, that the Lutherans and the Calvinists should have wasted their
energies in contending together upon such a point. But we moderns have
no right to boast. Precisely the same spirit is manifested now, and
denominations differ and strive together upon questions which the human
mind can never settle. The spirit which then animated the two parties
may be inferred from the reply of the Lutherans.

"The partisans of Calvin," they wrote, "have accumulated such numberless
errors in regard to the person of Christ, the communication of His
merits and the dignity of human nature; have given such forced
explanations of the Scriptures, and adopted so many blasphemies, that
the question of the Lord's Supper, far from being the principal, has
become the least point of difference. An outward union, merely for
worldly purposes, in which each party is suffered to maintain its
peculiar tenets, can neither be agreeable to God nor useful to the
Church. These considerations induced us to insert into the formulary of
concord a c