would not do. I therefore suffered the elevation of the host, to
remain, especially as it admits of a favorable, explanation, as I
showed in my little work '_De Captivitate Babylonica, &c._'" The
elevation of the host was still practised in Saxony generally in 1542,
[Note 2] twelve years after the Confession was written, approving of
the ceremonies of the mass, of which this was one. This remnant of
popery was, however, universally rejected soon after this period,
certainly before 1545, and in Wittenberg, in 1542.

_Again_, what is the natural import of the phrase on page 21 of the
Platform: "Accordingly the Lutheran church, in Europe and America, has
unanimously repudiated alike the mass and its ceremonies." The passage
itself specifies no time, when either was rejected, and neither says
nor implies that both were rejected at the same time. The word
"accordingly" refers to what preceded. The whole reads thus: "Topic I.,
_Ceremonies_ of the mass. The error taught on this subject by the
Augsburg Confession and Apology to it (namely, the error on these
ceremonies of the mass) was rejected by the reformers themselves a few
years after the Confession was first published. Accordingly, the
Lutheran Church, both in Europe and America, has unanimously
repudiated alike the mass and its ceremonies." As the Augsburg
Confession expressly teaches that private and closet masses had been
_previously_ rejected, and the Platform says the _only_ error in the
Augsburg Confession on this subject is the _ceremonies_ of the public
mass, its sacrificial and vicarious nature having also been repudiated
long before, it follows, that the thing here spoken of as the mass and
its ceremonies is that remnant of this rite, which, as proved above,
had not yet been rejected before 1530, the essential doctrine even of
the public mass having been rejected long before. Hence, the import of
this passage is: that whilst the reformers had long before the Diet of