ian, and by many others. The dispute was
taken up by still others and went to such lengths that for a minor
heresy a pastor, Funck, was executed by his fellow-Lutherans in
Prussia, in 1566. "Philippism" as it was called, at first grew, but
finally collapsed when the Formula of Concord was drawn up in 1580 and
signed by over 8000 clergy. This document is to the Lutheran Church
what the decrees of Trent were to the Catholics. The "high" doctrine
of the real presence was strongly stated, and all the sophistries
advanced to support it canonized. The sacramental bread and wine were
treated with such superstitious reverence that a Lutheran priest who
accidentally spilled the latter was punished by having his fingers cut
off. Melanchthon was against such "remnants of {134} papistry" which
he rightly named "artolatry" or "bread-worship."

But the civil wars within the Lutheran communion were less bitter than
the hatred for the Calvinists. By 1550 their mutual detestation had
reached such a point that Calvin called the Lutherans "ministers of
Satan" and "professed enemies of God" trying to bring in "adulterine
rites" and vitiate the pure worship. The quarrel broke out again at
the Colloquy of Worms. Melanchthon and others condemned Zwingli, thus,
in Calvin's opinion, "wiping off all their glory." Nevertheless Calvin
himself had said, in 1539, that Zwingli's opinion was false and
pernicious. So difficult is the path of orthodoxy to find! In 1557
the Zwinglian leader M. Schenck wrote to Thomas Blaurer that the error
of the papists was rather to be borne than that of the Saxons.
Nevertheless Calvinism continued to grow in Germany at the expense of
Lutheranism. Especially after the Formula of Concord the "Philippists"
went over in large numbers to the Calvinists.

[Sidenote: Effect on the nation]

The worst thing about these distressing controversies was that they
seemed to absorb the whole energies of the nation. No period is less
productive in modern German history than the age immediately following
the triumph of the Reformation. The movement, which had begun so
liberally and hopefully, became, temporarily at least, narrower and
more bigoted than Catholicism. It seemed as if Erasmus had been quite
right when he said that where Lutheranism reigned culture perished. Of
these men it has been said--and the epigram is not a bad one--that they
made an intellectual desert and called it religious peace.

And yet we s