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

oth parties were appended to this joint confession
of Protestant faith. This was better than any mere
protestation of brotherhood. It was actual
brotherhood, demonstrated and sealed. The articles,
we venture to affirm, are a complete scheme of
saving truth, and they stand a glorious monument
that Helvetia and Germany were one–in other
words, a glorious monument to the Oneness of
Protestantism.
This Confession of Marburg was the first welldefined
boundary-line drawn around the
Protestants. It marked them off as a distinct body
from the enthusiasts on the one hand and the
Romanists on the other. Their flag was seen to float
on the middle ground between the camp of the
visionaries and that of the materialists. "There is,"
said Zwingli, in opposition to the former, who saw
in the Sacrament only a commemoration, "there is
a real presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper."
"Faith," said Luther, in opposition to the opus
operatum of the latter, "faith is necessary in order
to our benefiting by the Sacrament." We thus see
that the middle camp has two opposing fronts,
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