On 15 December 1540 a secret conference took place between Johann Gropper, canon of Cologne, and Gerhard Veltwick, the Imperial secretary, on the one side and Butzer and Capito, the delegates of Protestant Strasbourg, on the other.
The two sides agreed their positions on original sin and justification, but the promise made by the Catholic party at Haguenau, to negotiate on the basis of the Confession and Apology, was withdrawn.
In consideration of his difficult political situation, especially of the threatened war with the Ottoman Turks and the negotiations of the French king with the Protestants in his country, it was his desire to pacify Germany.
The negotiators were Gropper, Pflug, and Eck on the Catholic side, under the oversight of the Papal Legate Cardinal Contarini; Bucer, the elder Johannes Pistorius, and Melanchthon for the Protestants.
Besides the presidents, Count Palatine Frederick and Granvella, six witnesses were present, among them Burkhardt and Feige, chancellors of Saxony and Hesse respectively, and Jakob Sturm of Strasbourg.
In spite of the opposition of Mainz, Bavaria, and the Imperial legate, Charles V still hoped for an agreement on the basis of the articles which had been accepted by both parties, those in which they differed being postponed to a later time.
The Pope: "The Protestants are like slippery snakes; they aim at no certain object, and thus show plainly enough that they are altogether enemies of concord, and want, not the suppression of vice but the overthrow of the apostolic see!
All men of sound mind see clearly the question is not only of maintaining the status of the pope as a sovereign and limited episcopacy, but rather of completely setting aside the episcopal office and of establishing in its stead and under its name an anti-Christian tyranny.
Not contented with these misdeeds, they exterminate those who strive to restore to the Church a purer doctrine and a more lawful order, or who merely venture to ask for these things.Thus the fate of the Regensburg Book was no longer doubtful.
In the meantime the Protestants were bound to the Regensburg Interim, enacted by Charles V, to ensure that they adhere to the articles agreed upon, not to publish anything on them, and not to abolish any churches or monasteries, while the prelates were requested to reform their clergy at the order of the legate.
These decisions might have become very dangerous to the Protestants, and in order not to force them into an alliance with his foreign opponents, the Emperor decided to change some of the resolutions in their favor; but the Roman Catholics did not acknowledge his declaration.