he chastised all his adversaries indiscriminately, with the same rough hand; neither the royal dignity of Henry VIII., nor the eminent learning and abilities of Erasmus, screened them from the same gross abuse with which he treated Tetzel and John of Eck.

"But these indecencies, of which Luther was guilty, must not be imputed wholly to the violence of his temper. They ought to be charged in part on the manners of his age. Some parts of Luther's behaviour, which to us appear most culpable, gave no offence to his contemporaries. The account of his death filled the Roman Catholic party with excessive, as well as indecent joy, and damped the spirit of all his followers; neither party sufficiently considering that his doctrines were now so firmly rooted as to be in a condition to flourish, independently of the hand which first had planted them."*

"But the most remarkable fact in the history of the Reformation, and, in my opinion, one of the most so in the history of the world, still remains to be mentionedthat the limits which the Reformation won while Luther lived, were very nearly those which divide the two religions at this day. Almost all that was accomplished before his death endured: almost all that was afterwards achieved was wrested back again by Rome. The enthusiasm of a single generation attained, under his guidance, the prescribed boundaries. No exertions of his disciples, no reverence for his name and virtues, no wider diffusion of faith, and knowledge, and civilisation, and commercial activity, and philosophical truth, during the course of three centuries of progressive improvement, have made any lasting additions to the work which he

*Robertson's History of Charles V., vol. vi. pp. 71-76.

left. Such as when it passed from the hands of its architect, or very nearly such, are its dimensions now. The form, indeed, is somewhat altered, and the part, which he considered as exclusively sacred, has been much narrowed by the change. But to the uncompromising, unrelenting enemy of Rome, it was an immortal triumph, that he extorted from her, with his own hands, all that she was ordained, so far as we yet have seen, to lose, and that he witnessed the utmost humiliation to which, even to this hour, it has pleased Providence permanently to reduce her."

* Waddington's History of the Reformation, vol. iii. p. 362.

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE OPENING OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.

FOR several years before the death of Luther, appearances were unfavourable to the peace and religious liberty of the Protestants. This led them, not so much to prayer and confidence in God as their shield and protector, but to strengthen the league of Smalcald, and prepare for war. They were now a thoroughly political body. This was the outward character of Protestantism at that early period. The man who loved peace was in his grave, and his counsels were forgotten by his followers. He could not conceive a greater calamity befalling the cause of truth than that the sword should be drawn in its defence. Better far be martyrs, he thought, than warriors.

The jealous Emperor narrowly watched the increasing power of the league, and pronounced it "an empire within an empire." But his fatal expedition to Algiers, his renewed war with Francis, and the successes of the Turks in Hungary, led him to temporise, to conceal his feelings and intentions. He held several diets of the empire for the avowed purpose of settling their religious differences, and restoring peace and harmony, but with no good results. The Protestants were deceived and thrown off their guard by fair pretences and apparent concessions. In the Diet of Spires, in 1542, the pontiff,

Paul III., by his legate, renewed his promise of a council. He signified that it should be held at Trent, a city in the Tyrol, subject to the king of the Romans, and situated on the confines between Germany and Italy. Ferdinand and the whole Catholic party expressed their immediate satisfaction, and accepted the proposal. Not so the Protestants. They rejected both the place and the council proposed by the pontiff; demanding a general, or Ecumenical, Council. They protested that they would pay no regard to a council held beyond the precincts of the empire, called by the pope's authority, and over which he assumed the right of presiding. Regardless, however, of their protestations, and fortified by the general consent of his own party, he published a bull for the convocation of the council at Trent before the 1st of November, and named three cardinals to preside as his legates.

It

At the appointed time, the pope's legates, the imperial ambassadors, and a few prelates appeared. But as a fierce war was then raging between the Emperor and Francis, few ecclesiastics could travel with safety. was manifest from these circumstances, that nothing satisfactory could be undertaken; and to avoid the ridicule and contempt of his enemies, the pope adjourned for an indefinite time, the re-opening of the council. Unhappily for the dignity and authority of the papal See at this very time, the Emperor and his brother Ferdinand, king of the Romans, found it necessary, not only to connive at the conduct of the Protestants, but to court their favour by repeated acts of indulgence. Ferdinand, who depended on their assistance for the defence of Hungary against the infidels, not only permitted their protestation to be inserted in the records of the diet, but

renewed in their favour all the Emperor's concessions at Ratisbon, adding to them whatever they demanded for their further security. Thus had the Reformers rest, and the evangelical principles time to deepen and spread, though not from the good will, but from the disturbed state of their adversaries' affairs.

As late as 1544, at the diet held in the same place, the politic Charles, perceiving that the time was not yet come to offend the jealous spirit of the Protestants, or to provoke the powers of the Smalcald Confederacy, contrived to soothe the Germans by new concessions, and a more ample extension of their religious privileges. Being still engaged in foreign wars, and his hands not free, he employed all his powers of dissimulation to court and flatter the Elector and the Landgrave, the heads of the Protestant party, and through them to deceive the members of the confederacy.

Meanwhile, his papal majesty was becoming day by day more jealous of these negotiations and concessions. He was longing as ardently as his three predecessors had done, for the rooting out, by force of arms, of this widespreading, giant heresy. It had been the constant object of the Vatican, from the beginning of the Reformation, to create a hostile breach between the Emperor and the Protestants, and a consequent appeal to arms. But, so far as we can judge, the consummation of these wicked designs was prevented for nearly thirty years, in the providence of God, and chiefly in answer to the prayers of one man. But he was now off the scene, and his brethren were trusting to their military organisation and numerical strength. Besides, the determined position which they had taken with reference to the proposed council, gave the pope and the Emperor every oppor