Melanchthon, and, in a less degree, even Zwingli; he was not so blind as the divines to the political necessities of the situation, and he managed to avert a breach for the time; it was due to him that Strassburg and Ulm, Nürnberg and Memmingen, and other towns added their weight to the protest against the decree of the Diet. Jacob Sturm of Strassburg and Tetzel of Nürnberg were, indeed, the most zealous champions of the Recess of 1526 during the debates of the Diet; but their arguments and the mediation of moderate Catholics remained without effect upon the majority. The complaint of the Lutherans that the proposed Recess would tie their hands and open the door to Catholic reaction naturally made no impression, for such was precisely its object. The Catholics saw that their opportunity had come, and they were determined to take at its flood the tide of reaction. The plea that the unanimous decision of 1526 could not be repealed by one party, though plausible enough as logic and in harmony with the particularism of the time, rested upon the unconstitutional assumption that the parties were independent of the Empire's authority; and it was not reasonable to expect any Diet to countenance so suicidal a theory.
A revolution is necessarily weak in its legal aspect, and must depend on its moral strength; and to revolution the Lutheran Princes in spite of themselves were now brought. They were driven back on to ground on which any revolution may be based; and a secret understanding to withstand every attack made on them on account of God's Word, whether it proceeded from the Swabian League or the national government, was adopted by Electoral Saxony, Hesse, Strassburg, Ulm, and Nürnberg. We fear the Emperor's ban, wrote one of the party, but we fear still more God's curse; and God, they proclaimed, must be obeyed before man. This was an appeal to God and to conscience which transcended legal considerations. It was the very essence of the Reformation, though it was often denied by Reformers themselves; and it explains the fact that from the Protest, in which the Lutherans embodied this principle, is derived the name which, for want of a better term, is loosely applied to all the Churches which renounced the obedience of Rome.
A formal Protest against the impending Recess of the Diet had been discussed at Nürnberg in March, and adopted at Speier in April. When, on the 19th, Ferdinand and the other imperial commissioners refused all concessions and confirmed the Acts of the Diet, the Protest was publicly read. The Protestants affirmed that the Diet's decree was not binding on them because they were not consenting parties; they proclaimed their intention to abide by the Recess of 1526, and so to fulfil their religious duties as they could answer for it to God and the Emperor. They demanded that their Protest should be incorporated in the Recess, and on Ferdinand's refusal, they published a few days later an appeal from the Diet to the Emperor, to the next General Council of Christendom, or to a congress of the German nation. The Princes who signed
