When, then, the Lutherans demanded that the Bohemian Brothers should accept the Augsburg Confession, and practically consent to absorption in the Lutheran body, Blahoslav and his friends resolved to offer a steady resistance to this proposal. Unfortunately, Blahoslav was forced to encounter, in this controversy, the most distinguished member of his own community. John Augusta, after his release from prison, had been welcomed back to his friends by the main body of the Brotherhood; but he soon found that the power which he desired to exercise over them was still resisted and resented. He proposed that, instead of the free exercise of preaching in the Brotherhood, certain definite parts of the gospel should be chosen for exposition each Sunday in the year; and he himself drew up a plan on which these discourses should be founded. Some of the Brothers objected that the doctrines suggested in his book were not altogether those held by the Brothers; while, no doubt, a still larger number resented the restrictions which such an arrangement would impose on the preachers. Irritated at the general opposition offered to his proposals, Augusta came to the conclusion that the Brotherhood was in a radically unsatisfactory condition; and he threw himself into the movement for union with the Lutherans, as a means of reform. So bitter was the opposition which he roused by this conduct, that he became entirely separated from the rest of the Brotherhood; and, when he died in 1572, his death passed almost unnoticed by those for whom he had done and suffered so much. In the meantime Maximilian was endeavouring to take up a neutral position in this controversy. Personally in sympathy with the Brothers, but afraid of offending Catholics and Lutherans, he continually assured all parties that he was unable to assent to any legal sanction for religious liberty, since he had bound himself to oppose novelties; but that, if they would only settle their differences between themselves, nobody would interfere with the performance of their religion. Even this statement was more definite and consistent than his actual practice; for, when the Catholic or Utraquist priests applied to him for powers to suppress novelties or heresies, he assented to their proposals, though, when either Brothers or Lutherans complained to him, he assured them of his personal sympathy for them, and his desire to leave them untouched.