The Thirty Years War | Page 9

extinguished, the fire, and unsatisfied claims
remained on either side. The Romanists imagined they had lost too
much, the Protestants that they had gained too little; and the treaty
which neither party could venture to violate, was interpreted by each in
its own favour.
The seizure of the ecclesiastical benefices, the motive which had so
strongly tempted the majority of the Protestant princes to embrace the
doctrines of Luther, was not less powerful after than before the peace;
of those whose founders had not held their fiefs immediately of the
empire, such as were not already in their possession would it was

evident soon be so. The whole of Lower Germany was already
secularized; and if it were otherwise in Upper Germany, it was owing
to the vehement resistance of the Catholics, who had there the
preponderance. Each party, where it was the most powerful, oppressed
the adherents of the other; the ecclesiastical princes in particular, as the
most defenceless members of the empire, were incessantly tormented
by the ambition of their Protestant neighbours. Those who were too
weak to repel force by force, took refuge under the wings of justice;
and the complaints of spoliation were heaped up against the Protestants
in the Imperial Chamber, which was ready enough to pursue the
accused with judgments, but found too little support to carry them into
effect. The peace which stipulated for complete religious toleration for
the dignitaries of the Empire, had provided also for the subject, by
enabling him, without interruption, to leave the country in which the
exercise of his religion was prohibited. But from the wrongs which the
violence of a sovereign might inflict on an obnoxious subject; from the
nameless oppressions by which he might harass and annoy the emigrant;
from the artful snares in which subtilty combined with power might
enmesh him--from these, the dead letter of the treaty could afford him
no protection. The Catholic subject of Protestant princes complained
loudly of violations of the religious peace--the Lutherans still more
loudly of the oppression they experienced under their Romanist
suzerains. The rancour and animosities of theologians infused a poison
into every occurrence, however inconsiderable, and inflamed the minds
of the people. Happy would it have been had this theological hatred
exhausted its zeal upon the common enemy, instead of venting its virus
on the adherents of a kindred faith!
Unanimity amongst the Protestants might, by preserving the balance
between the contending parties, have prolonged the peace; but as if to
complete the confusion, all concord was quickly broken. The doctrines
which had been propagated by Zuingli in Zurich, and by Calvin in
Geneva, soon spread to Germany, and divided the Protestants among
themselves, with little in unison save their common hatred to popery.
The Protestants of this date bore but slight resemblance to those who,
fifty years before, drew up the Confession of Augsburg; and the cause
of the change is to be sought in that Confession itself. It had prescribed

a positive boundary to the Protestant faith, before the newly awakened
spirit of inquiry had satisfied itself as to the limits it ought to set; and
the Protestants seemed unwittingly to have thrown away much of the
advantage acquired by their rejection of popery. Common complaints
of the Romish hierarchy, and of ecclesiastical abuses, and a common
disapprobation of its dogmas, formed a sufficient centre of union for
the Protestants; but not content with this, they sought a rallying point in
the promulgation of a new and positive creed, in which they sought to
embody the distinctions, the privileges, and the essence of the church,
and to this they referred the convention entered into with their
opponents. It was as professors of this creed that they had acceded to
the treaty; and in the benefits of this peace the advocates of the
confession were alone entitled to participate. In any case, therefore, the
situation of its adherents was embarrassing. If a blind obedience were
yielded to the dicta of the Confession, a lasting bound would be set to
the spirit of inquiry; if, on the other hand, they dissented from the
formulae agreed upon, the point of union would be lost. Unfortunately
both incidents occurred, and the evil results of both were quickly felt.
One party rigorously adhered to the original symbol of faith, and the
other abandoned it, only to adopt another with equal exclusiveness.
Nothing could have furnished the common enemy a more plausible
defence of his cause than this dissension; no spectacle could have been
more gratifying to him than the rancour with which the Protestants
alternately persecuted each other. Who could condemn the Roman
Catholics, if they laughed at the audacity with which the Reformers had
presumed to announce the only true belief?--if from Protestants they
borrowed the weapons against Protestants?--if, in