Protestantism in Poland and Bohemia - James Aitken Wylie

If a National Council could not meet to essay
the Reformation of the Church, might it not be
possible, some influential persons now asked, for
the three Protestant bodies in Poland to unite in one
Church? Such a union would confer new strength
on Protestantism, would remove the scandal
offered by the dissensions of Protestants among
themselves, and would enable them in the day of
battle to unite their arms against the foe, and in the
hour of peace to conjoin their labors in building up
their Zion. The Protestant communions in Poland
were -- lst, the Bohemian; 2ndly, the Reformed or
Calvinistic; and 3rdly, the Lutheran. Between the
first and second there was entire agreement in point
of doctrine; only inasmuch as the first pastors of
the Bohemian Church had received ordination
(1467) from a Waldensian superintendent, as we
have previously narrated,[7] the Bohemians had
come to lay stress on this, as an order of succession
peculiarly sacred. Between the second and third
there was the important divergence on the subject
of the Eucharist. The Lutheran doctrine of
consubstantiation approached more nearly to the
Roman doctrine of the mass than to the Reformed
69