Hesse, always ready and hopeful, tried to rouse it to new life; Basel was arming, but the south German towns urged peace. The Pope called upon the Emperor to make an end and put down the heresy at once, and even sent to the Five Cantons " aliquantum pecuniae": Ferdinand would have done the same, but was overruled by his advisers. The Austrian statesmen hoped to use the war for the Emperor's good, but to do so without expense: and the Emperor feared by any decisive step to rouse the French to war. The French on their part gained greatly by the Peace. Thus the settlement remained undisturbed, and the south German towns drew nearer to the Princes now that Zurich could give them no help.
In Zurich itself the religious movement continued: Bullinger, Zwingli's son-in-law and successor, banished from Bremgarten by the Peace, carried on his work; but it was now solely theological and internal; the Privy Council was discredited, as Bullinger explained to Myconius. Its existence meant foreign entanglements. And Zurich, weakened by the new power given to the country districts, became less and less able to pursue an adventurous foreign policy among the great States of Europe.
But the strife of doctrine remained behind, always significant for the history of thought, at times for politics as well. Bucer's task of mediation grew harder and its end more remote. Conferences with Melanchthon had no result, because it was impossible to devise a formula such as would satisfy Luther and still recognise the conflicting doctrines adapted to minds of different types. At Wittenberg (May 22-27, 1536) a well-attended Conference produced a conciliatory document, the Wittenberg Concord. According to it, the body and blood of Christ were truly and substantially present in the Eucharist, shown and received. Bucer, by a distinction not widely accepted, contended that the impious did not, while the merely unworthy did, receive them. To this view Strassburg, Augsburg, Ulm, Constance, and other cities agreed. But Luther hesitated to sign the Concord because he heard the Swiss had agreed to it, and feared it must therefore be bad.
On the other hand, in the previous January, the Swiss theologians had met at Basel and there drawn up the First Helvetic Confession. It was conciliatory in tone, and went beyond the purely symbolic view, the nuda signa, of Zwingli. But its framers were not at Wittenberg; and Bucer, the medium of intercourse, did not adequately represent one side to the other. Another Conference of the Swiss Reformers at Basel drafted a new document, showing a wish for unity, and at the same time making it clear why the Wittenberg Concord could not possibly be accepted. Luther's reply (1537) was guarded and distrustful, so that its circulation in Switzerland did not help the cause which Bucer and Melanchthon had at heart. A Conference at Zurich (April 28, 1538) showed the politicians as eager for unity as the theologians for distinction. Finally, Zurich (September 28, 1538) resolved to keep to her old view with no
