From the Diet of Worms to the Augsburg Confession - James Aitken Wylie

In the rear of the princes, and in some instances
in advance of them, came the free cities. We have
spoken of their rise in a former chapter. They
eminently prepared the soil for the reception of
Protestantism. They were nurseries of art,
cultivators of knowledge, and guardians of liberty.
We have already seen that at Nuremberg, during
the sittings of the Diet, and despite the presence of
the legate of the Pope and the ambassador of the
emperor, Protestant sermons were daily preached
in the two cathedral churches; and when
Campeggio threatened to apprehend and punish the
preachers in the name of his master, the
municipality spiritedly forbade him to touch a hair
of their heads. Other towns followed the example
of Nuremberg. The Municipal Diets of Ulm and
Spires (1524) resolved that the clergy should be
sustained in preaching the pure Gospel, and bound
themselves by mutual promise to defend each other
against any attempt to execute the Edict of Worms.
At the very moment that Protestantism was
receiving these powerful accessions from without,
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