Their principal demand appears somewhat strange in the light of the events of the past. The estates expressed the wish that the celebrated Compacts should cease to form part of the laws of the country. These enactments had indeed granted freedom of worship to the most moderate Utraquists--men who, except that they claimed the right to receive the communion in both kinds, hardly differed in their faith from the Roman church. On the other hand Ferdinand I. had used the Compacts as an instrument which justified him in oppressing the Bohemian Brethren, and the advanced Utraquists, whose teaching now differed but little from that of Luther. He had argued that all those who professed doctrines differing from the Church of Rome more widely than did the retrograde Utraquists, were outside the pale of religious toleration. Maximilian, indifferent as usual to matters of religious controversy, consented to the abolition of the Compacts, and these enactments, which had once been sacred to the Bohemian people, perished unregretted by all parties. The Romanists had always hated them, believing them not to be in accord with the general custom of the papal church, while the Lutherans and Bohemian Brethren considered their suppression a guarantee of their own liberty of worship. Confessio Bohemica. In 1575 Maximilian, who had long been absent from Bohemia, returned there, as the estates refused to grant subsidies to an absentee monarch. The sittings of the diet that met in 1575 were very prolonged. The king maintained a vacillating attitude, influenced now by the threats of the Bohemians, now by the advice of the papal nuncio, who had followed him to Prague. The latter strongly represented to him how great would be the difficulties that he would encounter in his other dominions, should he make concessions to the Protestants of Bohemia. The principal demand of the Bohemians was that the "Confession of Augsburg"--a summary of Luther's teaching--should be recognized in Bohemia. They further renewed the demand, which they had already expressed at the diet of 1567, that the estates should have the right of appointing the members of the consistory--the ecclesiastical body which ruled the Utraquist church; for since the death of John of Rokycan that church had had no archbishop. After long deliberations and the king's final refusal to recognize the confession of Augsburg, the majority of the diet, consisting of members of the Bohemian brotherhood and advanced Utraquists, drew up a profession of faith that became known as the _Confessio Bohemica_. It was in most points identical with the Augsburg confession, but differed from it with regard to the doctrine of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Here the Bohemian profession agreed with the views of Calvin rather than with those of Luther. This is undoubtedly due to the influence of the Bohemian Brethren. The _Confessio Bohemica_ was presented to Maximilian, who verbally expressed