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

ecclesiastical reforms, was to do a great deal more
than paving the way for a General Council; it was
to assume its powers and exercise its functions; it
was to be that Council itself–nay, it was to go
further still, it was to seat itself in the chair of the
Pontiff, to whom alone belonged the decision in all
matters of faith. It was to pluck the scepter from
the hands of the man who held himself divinely
invested with the government of the Church.
The Papal legate and the envoy of Charles V.
offered a stout resistance to the proposed resolution
of the princes. They represented to them what an
affront that resolve would be to the Papal chair,
what an attack upon the prerogatives of the Pontiff.
The princes, however, were not to be turned from
their purpose. They decreed that a Diet should
assemble at Spires, in November, and that
meanwhile the States and free towns of Germany
should express their mind as regarded the abuses to
be corrected and the reforms to be instituted, so
that, when the Council met, the Diet might be able
to speak in the name of the Fatherland, and demand
such Reformation of the Church as the nation
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