The Thirty Years War | Page 7

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.
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 still less where the
conditions of the founders generally extended to a system of doctrines;
for how is it conceivable that a permanent endowment should be made
of opinions left open to change?
What law cannot decide, is usually determined by might, and such was
the case here. The one party held firmly all that could no longer be
wrested from it--the other defended what it still possessed. All the
bishoprics and abbeys which had been secularized BEFORE the peace,
remained with the Protestants; but, by an express clause, the
unreformed Catholics provided that none should thereafter be
secularized. Every impropriator of an ecclesiastical foundation, who
held immediately of the Empire, whether elector, bishop, or abbot,
forfeited his benefice and dignity the moment he embraced the

Protestant belief; he was obliged in that event instantly to resign its
emoluments, and the chapter was to proceed to a new election, exactly
as if his place had been vacated by death. By this sacred anchor of the
Ecclesiastical Reservation, (`Reservatum Ecclesiasticum',) which
makes the temporal existence of a spiritual prince entirely dependent on
his fidelity to the olden religion, the Roman Catholic Church in
Germany is still held fast; and precarious, indeed, would be its situation
were this anchor to give way. The principle of the Ecclesiastical
Reservation was strongly opposed by the Protestants; and though it was
at last adopted into the treaty of peace, its insertion was qualified with
the declaration, that parties had come to no final determination on the
point. Could it then be more binding on the Protestants than Ferdinand's
guarantee in favour of Protestant subjects of ecclesiastical states was
upon the Roman Catholics? Thus were two important subjects of
dispute left unsettled in the treaty of peace, and by them the war was
rekindled.
Such was the position of things with regard to religious toleration and
ecclesiastical property: it was the same with regard to rights and
dignities. The existing German system provided only for one church,
because one only was in existence when that system was framed. The
church had now divided; the Diet had broken into two religious parties;
was the whole system of the Empire still exclusively to follow the one?
The emperors had hitherto been members of the Romish Church,
because till now that religion had no rival. But was it his connexion
with Rome which constituted a German emperor, or was it not rather
Germany which was to be represented in its head? The Protestants were
now spread over the whole Empire, and how could they justly still be
represented by an unbroken line of Roman Catholic emperors? In