What law cannot decide, is usually determined by might,
and such was the case here. The one party held firmly all that could
no longer be wrested from it -- the other defended what it still possessed.
All the bishoprics and abbeys which had been secularized BEFORE the peace,
remained with the Protestants; but, by an express clause,
the unreformed Catholics provided that none should thereafter be secularized.
Every impropriator of an ecclesiastical foundation,
who held immediately of the Empire, whether elector, bishop, or abbot,
forfeited his benefice and dignity the moment he embraced
the Protestant belief; he was obliged in that event instantly
to resign its emoluments, and the chapter was to proceed to a new election,
exactly as if his place had been vacated by death. By this sacred anchor
of the Ecclesiastical Reservation, (`Reservatum Ecclesiasticum',)
which makes the temporal existence of a spiritual prince entirely dependent
on his fidelity to the olden religion, the Roman Catholic Church in Germany
is still held fast; and precarious, indeed, would be its situation
were this anchor to give way. The principle of the Ecclesiastical Reservation
was strongly opposed by the Protestants; and though it was at last adopted
into the treaty of peace, its insertion was qualified with the declaration,
that parties had come to no final determination on the point.
Could it then be more binding on the Protestants than Ferdinand's guarantee
in favour of Protestant subjects of ecclesiastical states was upon
the Roman Catholics? Thus were two important subjects of dispute
left unsettled in the treaty of peace, and by them the war was rekindled.

Such was the position of things with regard to religious toleration and
ecclesiastical property: it was the same with regard to rights and dignities.
The existing German system provided only for one church, because one only
was in existence when that system was framed. The church had now divided;