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

went further; it provided for the re-introduction of
the mass, and the whole machinery of Romanism,
into Protestant provinces and cities. While it
stringently forbade all proselytising on the
Protestant side, it gave unbounded licence to it on
the Popish. What could happen, under an
arrangement of this sort, but that Protestantism
should wither and disappear? One could
prognosticate the year, almost the very day, when it
would be extinct. It was at this hour, with the
Augsburg Confession lying on the emperor's table,
that the free cities were asked to assist in arranging
for the funeral obsequies of Protestantism.
Nor does even this fully bring out the folly
which Charles committed in making such a
demand, and the treason of which the free cities
would have been guilty against the truth and the
world, had they yielded to it. The Recess of 1529
was the act that had led them to send forth the great
Protest from which they took their name. To adhere
to the Recess was to abandon their Protest–was to
pull down their flag as it floated before the eyes of
all Christendom, a sign and promise to the nations
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