After reviewing all that had passed in the diet, and after intercalating in their appeal the principal documents that had reference to it, the Protestants ended by saying: "We therefore appeal for ourselves, for our subjects, and for all who receive or who shall hereafter receive the Word of God, from all past, present, or future vexatious measures, to his Imperial Majesty, and to a free and universal assembly of holy Christendom." This document filled twelve sheets of parchment; the signatures and seals were affixed to the thirteenth. [Sidenote: ESCAPE OF GRYNÆUS.] Thus in the obscure dwelling of the chaplain of St. John's was made the first confession of the true Christian union. In presence of the holy mechanical unity of the Pope, these confessors of Jesus raised the banner of the living unity of Christ; and, as in the days of our Saviour, if there were many synagogues in Israel, there was at least but one single temple. The Christians of Electoral Saxony, of Luneburg, of Anhalt, of Hesse and the Margravate, of Strasburg, Nuremberg, Ulm, Constance, Lindau, Memmingen, Kempten, Nordlingen, Heilbron, Reutlingen, Isny, Saint Gall, Weissenburg, and Windsheim, clasped each other's hands on the 25th April, near the church of St. John, in the face of threatening persecutions. Among them might be found those who, like Zwingle, acknowledged in the Lord's Supper the entirely spiritual presence of Jesus Christ, as well as those who, like Luther, admitted his corporeal presence. There existed not at that time in the evangelical body any sects, hatred, or schism; christian unity was a reality. That upper chamber in which, during the early days of Christianity, the apostles with the women and the brethren "continued with one accord in prayer and supplication,"[176] and that lower chamber where, in the first days of the Reformation, the renewed disciples of Jesus Christ presented themselves to the Pope and the Emperor, to the world and to the scaffold, as forming but one body, are the two cradles of the Church; and it is in this its hour of weakness and humiliation that it shines forth with the brightest glory. [176] Acts i. 14. [Sidenote: MELANCTHON'S DEJECTION.]