seldom that an unhappy people can be found so justly infuriated, and rendered so totally desperate by their particular sufferings and their particular cause; it is seldom that they can have been so fortunately educated, as were the Hollanders, to a sense of right, by the prior influence of a free government. Yet the policy of the case, as it respects the tyrant himself (or the superior country) is not altered.

The oppressed country will always find support from the neighbouring powers; great mistakes, like those of Philip, will be probably made; illustrious defenders of their country will probably arise, produced by the occasion.

Injury must at all events be received by the superior power. The most successful issue will but turn subjects into slaves; brothers into enemies; and impair those principles of dignified obedience and reciprocal right between the governors and the governed, which externally and internally, in the superior as well as the dependant state, are the only steady and effective causes of all real greatness and prosperity.

The student is again recommended to turn to the debate in the Spanish council, given by Bentivoglio, on account of the similarity of the reasonings employed by our own statesmen in the contest with our American colonies.

WE

LECTURE XIII.

THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR.

E have now made some progress in the history of this century of religious wars. We have considered the civil and religious wars of France; next those of the Low Countries. We must now turn to Germany.

I have called this lecture, a Lecture on the Thirty Years' War; but I should rather have called it, a Lecture on the Religious Concerns of Germany.

The thirty years' war is, indeed, the most interesting portion of the whole, and that to which the attention of all readers of history has been more naturally directed; but there is much to be read and considered before you reach the thirty years' war, and much after; or you will not be able to embrace in your minds the whole subject—the subject of the religious concerns of Germany during the sixteenth century. In truth, I am to allude to such a mass of reading in this lecture, and allude to it so indistinctly, that I know not well how I can enable you to listen to what I am to address you.

It may assist you, perhaps, if you will first attend to the order in which I am going to proceed. It is the following The Reformation introduced great divisions of opinion into Germany.

I must first allude to the contest that existed between the Catholics and Protestants, from the breaking out of the Reformation to the peace of Passau. At this peace of Passau the interests of the contending parties were brought to an adjustment. I must therefore next allude to the provisions of that peace of Passau.

But after some time this adjustment was no longer acquiesced in, and the thirty years' war followed. I must therefore allude to the causes which brought on the thirty years' war.

This thirty years' war is a memorable era in history, and I must therefore allude to the conduct of it, and to the great hero of the Protestant cause on this occasion, Gustavus Adolphus.

The peace of Westphalia was the termination of this great contest, and of the whole subject; and I must therefore allude finally to the peace of Westphalia.

The whole interval from the days of Luther to this peace of Westphalia, an interval of more than a century, must be considered as one continued struggle, open or concealed, between the Reformers and the Roman Catholics.

The first period of this great contest extends to the peace of Passau, the next to the thirty years' war, the thirty years' war is the third. The peace of Westphalia is the final settlement of the whole.

First then, of the period that closed with the peace of Passau.

I need neither, as I conceive, relate the facts, nor comment. upon them, for you may study this part of the history yourselves in Robertson and Coxe, and it would be a waste of your time to offer you here, in a mutilated state, what you will find regularly displayed in those authors.

I may, however, select what I consider as the leading events, and recommend you to fix your attention upon them. They are the following:

First, The denial of the authority of the pope by Luther.

Secondly, The total intolerance of Charles V., avowed in the edict of Worms.

Thirdly, The resistance of the Protestants, and the exhibition of their own faith in the confession of Augsburg.

Fourthly, Their appeal to arms from the injustice of Charles-the league of Smalcalde.

Lastly, After the various events of unrighteous warfare, the religious peace concluded at Passau, in 1555, about the close of his reign.

These are the principal events. You must consider them, particularly the peace of Passau.

On this last, as it is so important, I will stop to make a few observations.

It was the first great adjustment of the contending religious

interests of Germany. It was extorted from Charles V., and, on the whole, it was favourable to the great cause of religious freedom, and the welfare of mankind.

Those of the inferior sect were no longer to be insulted, dispersed, or exterminated: they were to exist in society as their Roman Catholic brethren, erect and independent: they were to worship their God in the manner they thought most agreeable to his word. Human authority in matters of religious faith was avowedly cast off by a large and respectable part of the continent; and neither the magistrate nor the soldier were any longer to unsheath the sword, to imprison, to massacre, or to drag to the stake.

In practice, therefore, some progress had been made; some progress in practice, but little in the understandings or feelings of mankind. The parties abstained from mutual violence because they were well balanced, and feared each other; not because they discerned and acknowledged their mutual rights and duties. Not only were the Roman Catholics separated from the Protestants, but the Lutherans had separated themselves from the Zuinglians, afterwards called the Calvinists; and had endeavoured to stigmatize them with the name of Sacramentarians. That is, the Roman Catholics, the Lutherans, and Calvinists, were all equally ready to believe, that every religious opinion but their own was sinful, and therefore that their own, upon every principle of piety and reason, was at all events to be propagated, and every other repressed.

Again. We have already observed that one of the great difficulties on this subject always must be the disposal of property to the ecclesiastic: to which sect it is to be given by the state; to one, or to all, and upon what conditions.

This difficulty necessarily appeared at the pacification which was attempted at Passau.

It was insisted by the Protestants, that all those who separated from the church of Rome should, nevertheless, retain their ecclesiastical emoluments; emoluments it must be observed, which had been received originally from the Roman Catholic establishment.

By the Roman Catholics it was contended, on the contrary, that every such separatist should immediately lose his benefice.

This point could not, at the peace of Passau, be carried by the Protestants. They seem to have sullenly submitted, and to have virtually acquiesced in what was called the ecclesiastical reservation. This reservation secured the benefice, and left it to remain with the Catholic establishment when the holder turned Protestant.

The Protestants were consoled on the other hand, by a declaration, securing liberty of conscience to those who adopted the confession of Augsburg-a declaration which the Roman Catholics as little relished, as the Protestants did the reservation just mentioned.

The parties were therefore not as yet sufficiently religious and wise to settle the real subjects of contention. Then followed, after this peace of Passau, a sort of interval and pause. After this interval, all Germany was laid waste and convulsed by the thirty years' war.

We naturally turn to ask what were the causes of so dreadful an event-thirty years' war; the very term is a disgrace to humanity. To this the answer will, I think, be found to be, first, the intolerant conduct of the Protestant princes to each other; second, the bigotry, ambition, and arbitrary politics of the princes of the House of Austria.

I will say a word on each. First, with regard to the conduct of the Protestant princes, Lutheran and Calvinistic. It will appear to those who examine the history that the Protestant cause was well established at the peace of Passau, and at the death of Charles V.; but that it was afterwards nearly lost by the advantages which the Roman Catholic arms and politics derived from the dissensions which existed between the Lutheran and Calvinistic princes.

Though these princes had the most palpable bond of union (their wish to exercise the right of private judgment)-though they were both equally opposed to the Catholic powers who would have denied them this inestimable privilege, yet was it impossible for them to differ in some mysterious points of doctrine without a total disregard to mutual charity; and each sect, rather than suffer the other to think differently from themselves, was contented to run the chance of being overpowered by the Catholics, that is, of not being suffered to think at all.