med that was a judgment of God and a triumph for his own party.
Though there was no hope of reconciling the Swiss, the South German
Zwinglians, headed by the Strassburg Reformers Bucer and Capito,
hastened to come to an understanding with Wittenberg, without which
their position would have been extremely perilous. Bucer claimed to
represent a middle doctrine, such as was later asserted by Calvin. As
no middle ground is possible, the doctrine is unintelligible, being, in
fact, nothing but the statement, in strong terms, of two mutually
exclusive propositions. After much humiliation the divines succeeded,
however, in satisfying Luther, with whom they signed the Wittenberg
Concord on May 29, 1536. The Swiss still remained without the pale,
and Luther's hatred of them grew with the years. Shortly before his
death he wrote that he would testify before the judgment-seat of God
his loathing for the sacramentarians. He became more and more
conservative, bringing back to the sacrament some of the medieval
superstitions he had once expelled. He began again to call it an
offering and a sacrifice and again had it elevated in church for the
adoration of the faithful. He wavered on this point, because, as he
said, he doubted whether it were more his duty to "spite" the papists
or the sacramentarians. He finally decided on the latter, "and if
necessary," {111} continued he, "I will have the host elevated three,
seven, or ten times, for I will not let the devil teach me anything in
my church."

[Sidenote: Growth of Lutheranism in middle and upper classes]

Notwithstanding the bitter controversies just related Lutheranism
flourished mightily in the body of the people who were neither peasants
nor intellectuals nor Swiss. The appeal was to the upper and middle
classes, sufficiently educated to discard some of the medievalism of
the Roman Church and impelled also by nationalism and economic
self-interest to turn from the tyranny of the pope. City after city
and state after state enlisted under the banner of Luther. He
continued to appeal to them through the press. As a popular
pamphleteer he must be reckoned among the very ablest. His faults,
coarseness and unbridled violence of language, did not alienate most of
his contemporaries. Even his Latin works, too harshly described by
Hallam as "bellowing in bad Latin," were well adapted to the spirit of
the age. But nothing like his German writings had ever been seen
before.