Duke Henry of Mecklenburg, Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt-Köthen, and Counts Gebhard and Albrecht of Mansfeld.
This league was the work of Philip of Hesse, the statesman to whom the Reformation in Germany largely owed its success; his genuine adoption of its doctrines had little effect on his personal morality, yet he risked his all in the cause and devoted to it abilities of a very high order. But for his slender means and narrow domains he might have played a great part in history; as it was, his courage, fertility of resource, wide outlook, and independence of formulas enabled him to exert a powerful influence on the fortunes of his creed and his country. He already meditated a scheme, which he afterwards carried into effect, of restoring Duke Ulrich of Württemberg; and the skill with which he played on Bavarian jealousy of the Habsburgs more than once saved the Reformers from a Catholic combination. He wished to include in the league the half-Zwinglian cities of South Germany, and although his far-reaching scheme for a union between Zwinglian Switzerland and Lutheran Germany was baulked by Luther's obstinacy and Zwingli's defeat at Kappel, he looked as early as 1526 for help to the Northern Powers which eventually saved the Reformation in the course of the Thirty Years' War.
Meanwhile a Diet summoned to meet at Augsburg in December, 1525, was scantily attended and proved abortive. Another met at Speier in the following June, and its conduct induced a Reformer to describe it as the boldest and freest Diet that ever assembled. The old complaints against Rome were revived, and the recent revolt was attributed to clerical abuses. A committee of Princes reported in favour of the marriage of priests, communion in both kinds, the abolition, of private masses, a reduction in the number of fasts, the joint use of Latin and German in baptismal services and in the celebration of the Eucharist, and the interpretation of Scripture by Scripture. To prevent the adoption of these resolutions Ferdinand produced instructions from the Emperor, dated the 23rd of March, 1526, in which he forbade innovations, promised to discuss the question of a General Council with the Pope, and demanded the execution of the Edict of Worms. The cities, however, again declared the last to be impracticable, and called attention to the fact that, whereas at the date of Charles' letter he had been at peace with the Pope, they were now at open enmity. They declined to believe that the Emperor's intentions remained the same under these altered conditions; and they proposed sending a deputation to Spain to demand the suspension of the Edict of Worms, and the immediate convocation of a General or at least a National Council. Meanwhile the Princes suggested that as regarded matters of faith each Prince should so conduct himself as he could answer for his behaviour to God and to the Emperor; and this proposal was adopted, was promulgated in the Diet's Recess, and thus became the law of the Empire. Both the Emperor and
