If it had been opinions only that thus divided the minds of men,
with what indifference would all have regarded the division!
But on these opinions depended riches, dignities, and rights;
and it was this which so deeply aggravated the evils of division.
Of two brothers, as it were, who had hitherto enjoyed a paternal inheritance
in common, one now remained, while the other was compelled to leave
his father's house, and hence arose the necessity of dividing the patrimony.
For this separation, which he could not have foreseen,
the father had made no provision. By the beneficent donations
of pious ancestors the riches of the church had been accumulating
through a thousand years, and these benefactors were as much the progenitors
of the departing brother as of him who remained. Was the right of inheritance
then to be limited to the paternal house, or to be extended to blood?
The gifts had been made to the church in communion with Rome,
because at that time no other existed, -- to the first-born, as it were,
because he was as yet the only son. Was then a right of primogeniture
to be admitted in the church, as in noble families? Were the pretensions
of one party to be favoured by a prescription from times when the claims
of the other could not have come into existence? Could the Lutherans
be justly excluded from these possessions, to which the benevolence
of their forefathers had contributed, merely on the ground that,
at the date of their foundation, the differences between Lutheranism
and Romanism were unknown? Both parties have disputed, and still dispute,
with equal plausibility, on these points. Both alike have found it difficult
to prove their right. Law can be applied only to conceivable cases,
and perhaps spiritual foundations are not among the number of these,
and still less where the conditions of the founders generally extended
to a system of doctrines; for how is it conceivable that a permanent endowment
should be made of opinions left open to change?