The pope declaring himself ready to call a council, peaceable negotiations were renewed with the Roman Catholic Church, and in Nov., 1535, the papal nuncio Vergerius conferred with Luther in Wittenberg. While Luther had no faith in the pope's sincerity, he agreed to attend the council, wherever it might be held, although it was convened expressly for the extirpation of Lutheran heresy. At the instance of the elector, he prepared articles for the council in which he bitterly attacked Roman Catholic dogmas and the Roman Catholic Church, and termed the pope antichrist. The diet at Schmalkald (Feb., 1537) declined to take part in the council, and in 1539 Luther developed his views on councils in general in his Von den Concilien and Kirchen. Here he declared that not only could no reformation be hoped for from the pope and a papal council, but even the early councils and Fathers could not be regarded as the source for a reform. The entire system of Christian belief was to be derived, not from the Fathers and the councils, but from the Bible, the one task even of the four chief councils being simply and solely the defense of clear fundamental doctrines of the Scriptures. He therefore denied the right of any council which, he declared, should include laymen, to posit new articles of belief, to command new good works, or to require ceremonies; and he restricted their functions to juristic pronouncement of judgment according to the Bible in cases of peril to the faith. In this same treatise he reiterated his view that the Church consists solely of the congregation of the faithful, and is recognizable by the use of the means of grace and the power of the keys, as well as by prayer, the bearing of the cross, and uprightness of life, in that her members are sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
In the mean time, efforts had been made to unite the Protestants upon the doctrine of the Eucharist, and Butzer (q.v.) had conferred with Luther on the matter at Coburg as early as 1530. Luther himself could yield nothing, for he could not see why, if his opponents really acknowledged the true presence of the body of Christ, they would not grant external partici pation in the case of the unworthy. He accordingly expressed the utmost disapproval of Zwingli and warned against any acceptance of his teaching. Since, however, he found the other Southern Germans unexpectedly yielding, he reached a formal agreement with them at Wit tenberg in 1536, wherein they renounced Zwingli's teachings and recognized the true presence. On the other hand, since he did not, evidently through some uncertainty regarding the question, demand recognition of the reception of the elements by the actually "impious," he left a loophole for Butzer's opinion that only Christians who, even though unworthy, believed the words of institution, received, but not those who " mocked at all and believed naught." In 1537 he wrote a friendly letter to the burgomaster of Basel and to the Swiss cities, who could not, however, be won over, and in the following year he informed Bullinger that since the Marburg conference he had considered Zwingli personally an "excellent man." Luther's desire for all possible union with those of kindred views was shown still more clearly by his recognition of the Bohemian Brethren (q.v., II.). In 1533 and again five years later he had written the prefaces to the apology and confession which they had presented to the Margrave George of Brandenburg and King Ferdinand, even though in their new apology their theory of justification and of the Eucharist was not in agreement with his own.
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