and to what extent. It must be supplemented by the more important positive designation Evangelical.
The gospel of Christ, as laid down in the New Testament, and proclaimed again in its primitive
purity and power by the Reformation, is the basis of historical Protestantism, and gives it vitality
and permanency. The protest of Speier was based objectively upon the Word of God, subjectively
upon the right of private judgment and conscience, and historically upon the liberal decision of the
Diet of 1526.^946
Unfortunately, the moral force of the protest of Speier was soon weakened by dissensions
among the signers. Luther and Melanchthon, who at that time were quite agreed on the eucharistic
question, seriously objected to all political and military alliances, and especially to an alliance with
the Zwinglians, whom they abhorred as heretics.^947 They prevented vigorous measures of defense.
Philip of Hesse, who was in full political, and in half theological, sympathy with the Swiss and
Zwinglians, brought about in October of the same year the conference at Marburg in the hope of
healing the Protestant schism: but the conference failed of its main object, and Protestantism had
to carry on the conflict with Rome as a broken army.
§ 116. The Reconciliation of the Emperor and the Pope.
The Crowning of the Emperor. 1529.
The Emperor expressed to the Pope his deep regret at the sacking of the holy city. His breach
with him was purely political and temporary. The French troops again entered Lombardy. Henry
VIII. of England sympathized with Francis and the Pope. The Spanish counselors of Charles
repre-sented to him that the imprisonment of the vicar of Christ was inconsistent with the traditional
loyalty of Spain to the holy see.
On Nov. 26, 1527, the Emperor concluded an agreement with the Pope by which he was
released from confinement, and reinstated in his temporal power (except over a few fortified places),
on promise of paying the soldiers, and convening a council for the reformation of the church. For
a while Clement distrusted the Emperor, and continued his Franco-Italian policy; but at last they
definitely made peace, June 29, 1529. The Pope acknowledged the sovereignty of the Emperor in
Italy, which he had heretofore opposed; the Emperor guaranteed to him the temporal possessions,
with a reservation of imperial rights.
They held a personal conference at Bologna in November of that year. They were well
matched in political and diplomatic shrewdness, and settled their secular disputes as well as they
could. Charles was crowned Roman emperor, Feb. 24, 1530, at Bologna, the only emperor crowned
outside of St. Peter’s at Rome, and the last German emperor crowned by the Pope. The dignitaries
who graced the occasion were chiefly Spanish and Italian noblemen. Only one of the seven German
electors was present, Philip of the Palatinate. The wooden awning which was constructed between
(^946) It is remarkable that one of the most conservative branches of Protestant Christendom, "the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United
States of America," adopted the term as a part of its official title when, after the Revolutionary War, it assumed an independent organization.
This could not be done in the state of churchly sentiment which has since come to prevail in that church. Vigorous efforts have been made
within the last few years to get rid of the term Protestant, and to substitute for it Catholic, or American, or some other more or less
presumptuous epithet, but without success so far. The secession from this body which was organized in 1873 took the name of "The
Reformed Episcopal Church."
(^947) In a letter to Elector John, May 22, 1529 (De Wette, III. 455), Luther went so far as to call the Zwinglians "audacious enemies of
God and his Word, who fight against God and the sacrament."