The rapid growth, large followings, and powerful leaders of the confessions in the German lands vastly expanded the limits of public life, that is, the boundaries between those who possessed defensible rights and those who did not. The massive, overwhelming scope of the religious division defied the traditional remedy for heresy, which was judicial prosecution with three possible outcomes: acquittal, recantation, or death. The Peace of Augsburg transformed heresy from a spiritual crime into a question of temporal obedience, to be enforced – or not – at the temporal ruler's pleasure. This law averted the terrible spectre of a general civil war by accepting the lesser evil of a political toleration of religious differences. The Empire remained, on the one hand, a Catholic polity that tolerated those of the emperor's direct subjects who adhered to the (Lutheran) Confession of Augsburg. This is why the Calvinists, who appeared on the scene only five or so years later, had to present themselves as Lutherans with a difference.