The diet of Augsburg divided Germany into two religious
and two political parties, by recognizing the independent rights and existence
of both. Hitherto the Protestants had been looked on as rebels;
they were henceforth to be regarded as brethren -- not indeed
through affection, but necessity. By the Interim*, the Confession of Augsburg
was allowed temporarily to take a sisterly place alongside of
the olden religion, though only as a tolerated neighbour.
To every secular state was conceded the right of establishing the religion
it acknowledged as supreme and exclusive within its own territories,
and of forbidding the open profession of its rival. Subjects were to be free
to quit a country where their own religion was not tolerated.
The doctrines of Luther for the first time received a positive sanction;
and if they were trampled under foot in Bavaria and Austria,
they predominated in Saxony and Thuringia. But the sovereigns alone were
to determine what form of religion should prevail within their territories;
the feelings of subjects who had no representatives in the diet were
little attended to in the pacification. In the ecclesiastical territories,
indeed, where the unreformed religion enjoyed an undisputed supremacy,
the free exercise of their religion was obtained for all who had previously
embraced the Protestant doctrines; but this indulgence rested only
on the personal guarantee of Ferdinand, King of the Romans,
by whose endeavours chiefly this peace was effected; a guarantee, which,
being rejected by the Roman Catholic members of the Diet,
and only inserted in the treaty under their protest,
could not of course have the force of law.

* A system of Theology so called, prepared by order of the Emperor Charles V.
for the use of Germany, to reconcile the differences between
the Roman Catholics and the Lutherans, which, however, was rejected
by both parties -- Ed.