Part I Protheoria: Peace attempts from Marburg to Cassel, and Cassel's consensus on essentials

This business of Evangelical Consociation or Tolerance was usefully attempted at times, and is certainly to be attempted as a duty: first in the Marburg Colloquy, A.D. 1529, between Luther and Zwingli and those of another opinion — the Most Serene Landgrave of Hesse promoting pious Concord as far as in him lay, Melanchthon, Oecolampadius, Bucer, Jonas, A. Osiander, and others also being present — with little happy success, Luther with his own pressing too hard that Christ is corporally present in the Eucharist. Afterward the business was resumed in the Wittenberg Convention, A.D. 1536, Bucer and Capito then promoting it; a peace not destined to last while Luther lived, resting on Bucer's rather ambiguous Confession, Melanchthon writing the Formula. The same matter was acted, and more happily, in the Convention of Sandomierz, A.D. 1570, confirming a covenant among the associates of the Augsburg, Bohemian, and Helvetic Confessions.

Worthy of due praises in my judgment is the Cassel Convention, under the auspices of Wilhelm VI, Landgrave of Hesse, between the Marburg and Rinteln theologians, in the year 1661. There both sides agreed, in best faith, afterward repeated and confirmed, both in general concerning Consensus in the Essentials and the manner of preserving it, and in particular concerning the several Articles still in controversy.

And in general those venerable men pronounced on both sides: 1. That the Evangelicals agree on the Foundation of Faith and Salvation; that the controversial questions do not at all touch that Foundation, much less remove or overturn it; and that neither party thereafter, because of some difference, should cut the other off from fellowship or condemn them, and so on. 2. That for promoting that Consensus the remaining controversies ought either not to be treated in the churches from the pulpit, or certainly with the utmost modesty if necessity plainly required it — with no mention of dissenters, no harshness of words, no forced consequences, but only the declaration of truth from Scripture.

In particular, as to the Article of the Holy Supper, both Parties agreed that the Spiritual manducation of Christ's Body is altogether necessary to salvation and to the saving use of the Sacrament; and that otherwise the dissent between them as to the necessity of fraction and as to the oral manducation of Christ's Body, even by the mouth of an Unbeliever, is not such as would overturn the foundation of Salvation or shake the substance of the Sacrament. As to the Articles of Predestination, Grace, and Free Choice, they agreed: that after man's fall there are no residual powers left in him for spiritual good; that the whole business of human salvation depends on the Divine will, good pleasure, and grace; and that damnation is decreed to be inflicted on no one except because of sins. Controversies remained, but to be placed outside the census of fundamentals.