the very limits of
possibility. Melanchthon wrote: "The Landgrave deports himself with much
restraint. He has openly declared to me that in order to preserve peace,
he would accept even sterner conditions, as long as he did not thereby
disgrace the Gospel." (_C. R._ 2, 254.) But a denial of God, conscience,
and the Gospel was precisely what the Emperor expected. Hence the
Lutherans refer to his demands as cruel, impossible of fulfilment, and
as a breach of promise. Outraged by the Emperor's procedure, and fearing
for his own safety, the Landgrave secretly left the Diet on August 6.
War seemed inevitable to many. The reading of the Confutation had
shattered the last hopes of the Lutherans for a peaceful settlement.
They said so to each other, and wrote it to those at home, though not
all of them in the lachrymose tone of the vacillating Melanchthon, who,
filled with a thousand fears was temporarily more qualified for
depriving others of their courage than for inspiring courage. (Plitt,
24.)

49. Sustained by Luther.

In these days of severe trials and sore distress the Lutherans were
sustained by the comforting letters of Luther and the bracing
consciousness that it was the divine truth itself which they advocated.
And the reading of the Confutation had marvelously strengthened this
conviction. Brueck reports an eyewitness of the reading of the Augustana
as saying: "The greater portion among them [the Papists] is not so
ignorant as not to have seen long ago that they are in error." (Plitt,
18.) Because of this conviction there was, as Melanchthon reported, a
"marvelous congratulation" among the Lutherans after the reading of the
Confutation. "We stand for the divine truth, which God cannot but lead
to victory, while our opponents are condemned by their own consciences,"
--such was the buoying conviction of the Lutherans. And in this the
powerful letters of Luther strengthened the confessors at Augsburg. He
wrote: "This is the nature of our Christian doctrine, that it must be
held and grasped as certain and that every one must think and be
convinced: The doctrine is true and sure indeed and cannot fail. But
whoever falls to reasoning and begins to waver within himself, saying:
My dear friend, do you believe that it is true, etc.? such a heart will
never be a true Christian." (Plitt, 12.)

Concerning the spiritual support which the confessors at Augsburg,
notably Melanchthon, received from Luther, Plitt remarks: "What L