By his lectures and teaching at the University of Hemstadt George Calixt[4] gave rise to a new and prolonged discussion known as the /Syncretist/ controversy. The Duke of Brunswick having refused to accept the /Formula of Concord/, the professors at the university which he had founded felt themselves much more free in their teaching than those in other centres of Lutheranism. Calixt denied the ubiquity of Christ's body and the attribution of divine qualities to Christ's human nature. Though a strong opponent of several distinctly Catholic or Calvinist beliefs he saw much that was good in both, and he longed for a reunion of Christendom on the basis of an acceptance of the beliefs and practices of the first six centuries. He was charged with aiming at a confusion of all religions, and in proof of this charge it was alleged that he rejected the Lutheran teaching on Original Sin and on man's natural powers of doing good even before justification, that he defended the meritorious character of good works, the supremacy of the Pope, at least /de jure ecclesiastico/, and the sacrifice of the Mass (1639). In 1643 a disputation was held, in which Hornejus, a colleague of Calixt, supported his doctrine especially on the meritoriousness of good works. The appearance of Calixt at the conference summoned by the King of Poland in Thorn (1645) to promote a reunion with Rome, and the friendly attitude which he had adopted towards the Catholics and the Calvinists helped to increase the suspicions of his adversaries. Calixt died in 1656, but for years after his death the spirit of toleration, that he had done so much to foster, was one of the distinguishing features of the University of Helmstadt. It was during this controversy that the Branch Theory, namely, that Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism formed three divisions of the one true Church, was formulated clearly for the first time.