A Refutation was prepared by Eck and others, and read before the Diet on August 3.
Negotiations continued and still further concessions were wrung from Melanchthon, concessions of so dangerous a nature that his fellow-Protestants denounced him as an enemy of the faith and appealed to Luther against him.

Melanchthon had agreed to call the mass a sacrifice, if the word were qualified by the term "commemorative," and also promised that the bishops should be restored to their ancient jurisdictions, a measure justified by him as a blow at turbulent sectaries but one also most {118} perilous to Lutherans.

On the other hand, Eck made some concessions, mostly verbal, about the doctrine of justification and other points.
That with this mutually conciliatory spirit an agreement failed to materialize only proved how irreconcilable were the aims of the two parties.

[Sidenote: September 22] The Diet voted that the Confession had been refuted and that the Protestants were bound to recant.

The emperor promised to use his influence with the pope to call a general council to decide doubtful points, but if the Lutherans did not return to the papal church by April 15, 1531, they were threatened with coercion.
[Sidenote: League of Schmalkalden] To meet this perilous situation a closer alliance was formed by the Protestant states at Schmalkalden in February 1531.