The Lutherans might have been possibly expected to be the most rational, that is, the most tolerant of the two, but they were not so; they were in reality more in fault than the Calvinists; being not only the first aggressors in this dispute with their fellow-protestants, but the more ready to temporize, to betray and desert the common cause.

You will perceive that I am here obliged to leave great blanks behind me, as I go along, and you will perceive the same through every part of this lecture. These blanks must be hereafter filled up by your own diligence. I cannot expect to make the steps I take through my subject very intelligible at present.

But you will be able to judge of my arrangement, my statements, and my conclusions hereafter, when you come to read the history.

I must, then, for the present, content myself with repeating to you that the Protestant princes were themselves very faulty, more particularly the Lutheran princes; their intolerance to each other most unpardonable; and that the conduct of some of the electors of Saxony was very despicable, and most injurious to the Protestant cause; and finally, that all this folly and intolerance led to the thirty years' war.

My next statement was, that the thirty years' war, and all its dreadful scenes, were occasioned, in the second place, by the civil and religious politics, the bigoted and arbitrary conduct of the princes of the House of Austria.

Here again large blanks must be left. You can only judge of these politics by reading the reigns of those princes. I must refer you to the pages of Mr. Coxe.

I will make, however, a few remarks. These princes were Ferdinand I., Maximilian, Rodolph, Matthias, Ferdinand II. The character of Maximilian deserves your notice.

It is very agreeable to find among these Austrian princes one sovereign at least like Maximilian, whose conduct is marked by justice, wisdom, and benevolence, and whose administration realizes what an historian would propose, as a model, for all those who are called upon to direct the affairs of mankind.

On this account I must observe, that there is no period connected with these religious wars that deserves more to be

studied than these reigns of Ferdinand I., Maximilian, and those of his successors who preceded the thirty years' war. We have no sovereign who exhibited that exercise of modera tion and good sense which a philosopher would require, but Maximilian; and he was immediately followed by princes of a different complexion, and as all the various sects themselves were ready from the first to display at any moment those faults which belong to human nature, when engaged in religious concerns, the whole subject of toleration and mild government, its advantages and its dangers, and the advantages and dangers of an opposite system, are at once presented to our consideration; and the only observation that remains to be made is this, that the difficulties and the hazards of the harsh and unjust system are increased and exasperated by their natural progress, while those that belong to the mild system are chiefly to be expected at first; that they gradually disappear, and become less important, particularly as the world advances in civilization and knowledge, and as the thoughts of men are more diversified by the active pursuits and petty amusements which multiply with their growing prosperity.

Nothing could be more complete than the difficulty of toleration at the time when Maximilian reigned; and if a mild policy could be attended with favourable effects in his age and nation, there can be little fear of the experiment at any other period.

No party or person in the state was then disposed to tolerate his neighbour from any sense of the justice of such forbearance, but from motives of temporal policy alone. The Lutherans, it will be seen, could not bear that the Calvinists should have the same religious privileges with themselves. The Calvinists were equally opinionated and unjust; and Maximilian himself was probably tolerant and wise, chiefly because he was in his real opinions a Lutheran, and in outward profession, as the head of the empire, a Roman Catholic.

For twelve years, the whole of his reign, he preserved the religious peace of the community, without destroying the religious freedom of the human mind. He supported the Roman Catholics, as the predominant party, in all their rights,

possessions, and privileges; but he protected the Protestants in every exercise of their religion which was then practicable. In other words, he was as tolerant and just as the temper of society then admitted, and more so than the state of things would have suggested. Now, more than this, no considerate Christian or real philosopher will require from the sovereign power at any time; not more than to countenance toleration, to be disposed to experiments of toleration, and to lead on to toleration, if the community can but be persuaded to follow. More than this will not, I think, be required from the rulers of the world by any real philosopher and true Christian; and this not because the great cause of religious truth and inquiry is at all indifferent to them (it must be always most dear to them), but because they know that mankind on these subjects are profoundly ignorant, and incurably irritable. The merit of Maximilian was but too apparent the moment that his son Rodolph was called upon to supply his place.

The tolerance and forbearance of Maximilian had been favourable, as it must always be, to the better cause; but the Protestants, instead of being encouraged by the visible progress of their tenets, and thereby induced to leave them to the sure operation of time, and the silent influence of truth, had broken out with all the stupid fury that often belongs to an inferior sect, and indulged themselves in the most public attacks and unqualified invectives against the established church. The gentle but powerful hand of Maximilian was now withdrawn; and he had made one most fatal and unpardonable mistake: he had always left the education of his son and successor too much to the discretion of his bigoted consort. Rodolph, his son, was therefore as ignorant and furious on his part as were the Protestants on theirs; he had immediate recourse to the usual expedients-force, and the execution of the laws to the very letter. It is needless to add, that injuries and mistakes quickly multiplied as he proceeded; and Maximilian himself, had he been recalled to life, would have found it difficult to extricate his unhappy sons and his unfortunate people from the accumulated calamities which it had been the great glory of his own reign so skilfully to avert. After Rodolph comes Matthias, and unhappily for all Europe, Bohemia and the empire fell afterwards under the

management of Ferdinand II. Of the different Austrian princes, it is the reign of Ferdinand II. that is more particularly to be considered.

Such was the arbitrary nature of his government over his subjects in Bohemia, that they revolted. They elected for their king the young Elector Palatine, hoping thus to extricate themselves from the bigotry and tyranny of Ferdinand. This crown so offered was accepted; and in the event, the cause of the Bohemians became the cause of the Reformation in Germany, and the Elector Palatine the hero of that

cause.

It is this which gives the great interest to this reign of Ferdinand II., to these concerns of his subjects in Bohemia, and to the character of this Elector Palatine. For all these events and circumstances led to the thirty years' war.

I cannot here explain to you the particular circumstances which produced such unexpected effects as I have now stated, but you may study them in Coxe and other historians.

We thus arrive at the thirty years' war. I will, however, turn for a moment to this Elector Palatine. This is the prince who was connected with our own royal family. He was married to the daughter of our James I.

You will see, even in our own historians, the great interest which the Protestant cause in Germany to which I am obliged so indistinctly to allude, excited in England, as well as in all the rest of Europe.

The history of the Elector Palatine is very affecting; you will read it in Coxe. He accepted, you may remember, the crown which was offered to him by the Bohemians; he was unworthy of it; he accepted it in evil hour.

It must be confessed that the difficulties of those in exalted station are peculiarly great. It is the condition of their existence that the happiness of others shall depend on them, shall depend not only on the high qualities of their nature, their generosity, their courage, but on the endowments of their minds, their prudence, their foresight, their correct judgment, their accurate estimates not only of others but of themselves. So unfortunately are they situated, that their ambition may be even generous and noble, and yet their characters be at last justly marked with the censure of mankind.

The Elector Palatine, by accepting the crown of Bohemia, became, as I have just observed, under the existing circumstances of Germany, the chief of the Protestant cause; but he undertook a cause so important, and he suffered the lives and liberties of thousands to depend on his firmness and ability, without ever having properly examined his own character, or considered to what situations of difficulty his powers were equal. When, therefore, the hour of trial came, when he was weighed in the balance, he was found wanting, and his kingdom was divided from him. Had he himself been alone interested in his success, his subsequent sufferings might have atoned for his fault; but the kingdom of Bohemia was lost to its inhabitants, the Palatinate to its own subjects, and the great cause of religious inquiry and truth might have also perished in the general wreck of his fortunes.

But in the reign of the same Ferdinand II. there arose, in the same cause in which the Elector Palatine had failed, a hero of another cast, Gustavus Adolphus.

And now, to recapitulate a little, that you may see the connecting links of this part of the subject, in which I am obliged to leave such blanks; you will have understood in a general manner, and I must now remind you, that the House of Austria was the terror of the Protestants of Germany; that Ferdinand II. oppressed by his tyranny and bigotry his Protestant subjects, more particularly in Bohemia ; that their cause became the cause of the Protestant interest in Germany; that the Elector Palatine was the first hero of this great cause, and that he failed; that the illustrious Swede was the second, and that he deserved the high office which he bore-that he deserved to be the defender of the civil and religious liberties of Europe, and that he was the great object of admiration in the thirty years' war.

Of this thirty years' war it is not at all necessary that I should speak here, even if I had time, which I have not, because the particulars are so interesting, that I can depend upon your reading them. You will do so, I beg to assure you, with great pleasure, if you once turn to them. The narrative and detail you will find in Coxe.

The campaigns of Gustavus, his victories, his death; the campaigns of the generals he left behind him; the campaigns