Part I Protheoria: Degrees of the schism — Ubiquitarians, Flaccians, and the Formula of Concord

Such were Johann Brenz, father of the Ubiquitarians; Jakob Andreae, from the carpenter's craft called Schmidlin, who would add much to the Brentians; Tilemann Heshusius, fire and flame of so many tumults; Johann Marbach, marked by new portents and calumnies against Pezel, Zanchi, Tossanus, and others; Samuel Huber and Aegidius Hunnius, restless tempers, swollen with new births even concerning Predestination: and above all Flacius Illyricus with his party, the most unjust persecutor of Philip and of the Augsburg Confession as Melanchthon had emended it — though Luther himself had encouraged that work — from whom the Flaccians, and the Flaccio-Brentians, are most noted for their furies: and at last the Authors of the Book of Concord, or Bergen Formula, with Jakob Andreae, Selnecker, Chytraeus, Chemnitz, and others as chief captains. Concerning its Authors, Writing, Scope, Articles, Reprobation, Approbation, Apology, Sequels, and so on, Hospinian treats at length in his work Concordia Discors, and the Palatines in the Neustadt Admonition; also Heinrich Alting in his manuscript History of the Palatine Reformation, and others.

From these things it will easily be plain that a Schism of this kind was born among Evangelicals, to which rivalry between Luther and Carolostadius first gave occasion, and soon rivalry between Luther and Zwingli — men equal in learning and in zeal for reform, yet discordant in one point, the mode of Eucharistic presence. Hence first arose the unhappy Schism, a dissent about the Holy Supper lighter in its beginnings; lighter, I say, both from the Marburg Colloquy, in which Luther had enjoined silence, and from comparing Article X of the Augsburg Confession with the Elucidation Melanchthon afterward added, in which the disapproval of those who teach otherwise was omitted. But soon the sharp anger (ὀξυχολία) and vehemence of certain men fostered the divorce of minds and opinions — such as men's tempers were — and not last in that order Jakob Andreae, truly a Schmidlin or smith of contentions; Tilemann Heshusius, who somehow could not bear the fortune of General Superintendent of the whole Palatinate at the age of thirty-two; then the notorious Johann Marbach, Flacius Illyricus, and others. Soon the dogma of Ubiquity was brought to birth — asserted indeed at first on the occasion of the Eucharistic Controversy, but afterward left silent by Luther and dropped altogether, as also in the Augsburg Confession. Yet it broke out again after Luther's death, poured out by Brenz, but interpolated and promoted by Jakob Andreae, the Flaccians, the Bergen men, and others. Hence came their divorce from the Augsburg Confession as Melanchthon had reviewed and emended it, especially at Article X, and the distinction they produced between the Confession as varied and as unvaried. Hatreds, fury, force, and exacerbation followed on every side.