The commission charged to refute the Confession met twice a-day, and each of the theologians who composed it added to it his refutations and his hatred. HRSCV4 On the 13th July the work was finished. Lastly, not confining themselves to this official answer, the Romish theologians, who saw the sun of power shining upon them, filled Augsburg with insolent and abusive pamphlets. There was but one opinion on the Papist Refutation; it was found confused, violent, thirsting for blood.
He rolled, handled, crushed, and so damaged the two hundred and eighty pages of his doctors, that when he returned them two days after, says Spalatin, there were not more than twelve entire. Charles would have been ashamed to have such a pamphlet read in the diet, and he required, in consequence, that it should be drawn up anew, shorter and in more moderate language.
Charles and his ministers had great doubts of its success; leaving, therefore, the theologians for a moment, they imagined another manoeuvre. If you do so, there are no favors that you may not expect from the emperor; if not, dread his anger. The emperor cannot believe it; and he orders you to let him know the truth. The Swiss! This alliance was the phantom incessantly invoked at Augsburg to alarm Charles the Fifth.
And in reality deputies or at least friends of the Swiss, had already appeared in that city, and thus rendered the position still more serious. Bucer had arrived two days before the reading of the Confession, and Capito on the day subsequent to it. There was even a report that Zwingle would join them. But for a long time all in Augsburg, except the Strasburg deputation, were ignorant of the presence of these doctors. It was only twenty-one days after their arrival that Melancthon learned it positively, so great was the mystery in which the Zwinglians were forced to enshroud themselves.
Bucer and Capito in their retreat, which was like a prison to them, had taken advantage of their leisure to draw up the Tetrapolitan Confession, or the confession of the four cities. The deputies of Strasburg, Constance, Memmingen, and Lindau, presented it to the emperor. These cities purged themselves from the reproach of war and revolt that had been continually objected against them.
