Ad omnes Germaniae ecclesias reformatas, piorum, qui sub Zvingliani et Calviniani nominis invidia, vim & iniuriam patiuntur, apologia

Pandora's Box

They fabricated a new Formula, which—following a new and unheard-of example—they peddled about like some Pandora’s box, not so that it could be examined by mature judgment in any legitimate Synod, but so that, once approved privately by individual ministers of the churches, it could then be thrust upon everyone publicly. This matter displeased all sensible people, and ecclesiastical and political men were found everywhere who disapproved of this new way of acting and believed that this unfortunate offspring should rather be cast out into an alien world than be received by the Reformed Churches. First, because by it that monster of the Ubiquity the belief that Christ's physical body is everywhere at once of the body of Christ—than which nothing more absurd or more alien to the simplicity of the Christian faith has ever been devised—is established. Secondly, because they saw that the doctrine of the person of Christ is involved in a new and dangerous sense, and that it overflows with Lycabean bile a reference to bitter, poisonous rhetoric, and bristles with the dire condemnations of innocent men and most flourishing churches. By these, the ashes of many martyrs, whose souls live with Christ, are violated, the consciences of many are troubled, and the Churches of foreign nations are torn away from the German ones, not without a pleasant spectacle being provided to the common enemies of the Gospel. And at the beginning, there were those who said there was a need for a meeting of the Most Illustrious Princes, in which, with mature counsel, the whole of this cause might be decided.