The History of the Thirty Years War | Page 8

the Swede the
Baltic, to break the chains which are forged for Germany.
It is difficult to say what would have been the fate of the Reformation,
and the liberties of the Empire, had not the formidable power of Austria
declared against them. This, however, appears certain, that nothing so
completely damped the Austrian hopes of universal monarchy, as the
obstinate war which they had to wage against the new religious
opinions. Under no other circumstances could the weaker princes have
roused their subjects to such extraordinary exertions against the
ambition of Austria, or the States themselves have united so closely
against the common enemy.
The power of Austria never stood higher than after the victory which
Charles V. gained over the Germans at Muehlberg. With the treaty of
Smalcalde the freedom of Germany lay, as it seemed, prostrate for ever;
but it revived under Maurice of Saxony, once its most formidable
enemy. All the fruits of the victory of Muehlberg were lost again in the
congress of Passau, and the diet of Augsburg; and every scheme for
civil and religious oppression terminated in the concessions of an
equitable peace.
The diet of Augsburg divided Germany into two religious and two
political parties, by recognizing the independent rights and existence of

both. Hitherto the Protestants had been looked on as rebels; they were
henceforth to be regarded as brethren -- not indeed through affection,
but necessity. By the Interim*, the Confession of Augsburg was
allowed temporarily to take a sisterly place alongside of the olden
religion, though only as a tolerated neighbour. To every secular state
was conceded the right of establishing the religion it acknowledged as
supreme and exclusive within its own territories, and of forbidding the
open profession of its rival. Subjects were to be free to quit a country
where their own religion was not tolerated. The doctrines of Luther for
the first time received a positive sanction; and if they were trampled
under foot in Bavaria and Austria, they predominated in Saxony and
Thuringia. But the sovereigns alone were to determine what form of
religion should prevail within their territories; the feelings of subjects
who had no representatives in the diet were little attended to in the
pacification. In the ecclesiastical territories, indeed, where the
unreformed religion enjoyed an undisputed supremacy, the free
exercise of their religion was obtained for all who had previously
embraced the Protestant doctrines; but this indulgence rested only on
the personal guarantee of Ferdinand, King of the Romans, by whose
endeavours chiefly this peace was effected; a guarantee, which, being
rejected by the Roman Catholic members of the Diet, and only inserted
in the treaty under their protest, could not of course have the force of
law.
* A system of Theology so called, prepared by order of the Emperor
Charles V. for the use of Germany, to reconcile the differences between
the Roman Catholics and the Lutherans, which, however, was rejected
by both parties -- Ed.
If it had been opinions only that thus divided the minds of men, with
what indifference would all have regarded the division! But on these
opinions depended riches, dignities, and rights; and it was this which so
deeply aggravated the evils of division. Of two brothers, as it were,
who had hitherto enjoyed a paternal inheritance in common, one now
remained, while the other was compelled to leave his father's house,
and hence arose the necessity of dividing the patrimony. For this
separation, which he could not have foreseen, the father had made no
provision. By the beneficent donations of pious ancestors the riches of
the church had been accumulating through a thousand years, and these

benefactors were as much the progenitors of the departing brother as of
him who remained. Was the right of inheritance then to be limited to
the paternal house, or to be extended to blood? The gifts had been made
to the church in communion with Rome, because at that time no other
existed, -- to the first-born, as it were, because he was as yet the only
son. Was then a right of primogeniture to be admitted in the church, as
in noble families? Were the pretensions of one party to be favoured by
a prescription from times when the claims of the other could not have
come into existence? Could the Lutherans be justly excluded from
these possessions, to which the benevolence of their forefathers had
contributed, merely on the ground that, at the date of their foundation,
the differences between Lutheranism and Romanism were unknown?
Both parties have disputed, and still dispute, with equal plausibility, on
these points. Both alike have found it difficult to prove their right. Law
can be applied only to conceivable cases, and perhaps spiritual
foundations are not among the number of these, and