every Christian doctrine, but only a new creed in place of all the
rest,--to have admitted the possibility of several roads, to heaven, when
zealots of all creeds would shut up all pathways but their own; if such
sentiments and purposes were sins, they would have been ill-exchanged for
the best virtues of the age. Yet, no doubt, this was his crying offence
in the opinion of many contemporaries. He was now becoming apostate from
the ancient Church, but he had long thought that Emperors, Kings, and
Popes had taken altogether too much care of men's souls in times past,
and had sent too many of them prematurely to their great account. He was
equally indisposed to grant full-powers for the same purpose to
Calvinists, Lutherans, or Anabaptists. "He censured the severity of our
theologians," said a Catholic contemporary, accumulating all the
religious offences of the Prince in a single paragraph, "because they
keep strictly the constitutions of the Church without conceding a single
point to their adversaries; he blamed the Calvinists as seditious and
unruly people, yet nevertheless had a horror for the imperial edicts
which condemned them to death; he said it was a cruel thing to take a
man's life for sustaining an erroneous opinion; in short, he fantasied in
his imagination a kind of religion, half Catholic, half Reformed, in
order to content all persons; a system which would have been adopted
could he have had his way." This picture, drawn by one of his most
brilliant and bitter enemies, excites our admiration while intended to
inspire aversion.

The articles of agreement at Antwerp thus promulgated assigned three
churches to the different sects of reformers, stipulated that no attempt
should be made by Catholics or Protestants to disturb the religious
worship of each other, and provided that neither by mutual taunts in
their sermons, nor by singing street ballads, together with improper
allusions and overt acts of hostility, should the good-fellowship which