Nothing
can more decisively show than this the wonderful progress which the
Reformation in so short a time had made. From this Protest the reformers
received the name of Protestants, which they have since retained.
The emperor, flushed with success, now resolved, with new energy, to
assail the principles of the Reformation. Leaving Spain he went to
Italy, and met the pope, Clement VII., at Bologna, in February, 1530.
The pope and the emperor held many long and private interviews. What
they said no one knows. But Charles V., who was eminently a sagacious
man, became convinced that the difficulty had become far too serious to
be easily healed, that men of such power had embraced the Lutheran
doctrines that it was expedient to change the tone of menace into one of
respect and conciliation. He accordingly issued a call for another diet
to meet in April, 1530, at the city of Augsburg in Bavaria.
"I have convened," he wrote, "this assembly to consider the difference
of opinion on the subject of religion. It is my intention to hear both
parties with candor and charity, to examine their respective arguments,
to correct and reform what requires to be corrected and reformed, that
the truth being known, and harmony established, there may, in future, be
only one pure and simple faith, and, as all are disciples of the same
Jesus, all may form one and the same Church.
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