two equal powers, but a truce between a sovereign and unconquered rebels.
From this principle all the proceedings of the Roman Catholics
against the Protestants seemed to flow, and still continue to do so.
To join the reformed faith was still a crime, since it was to be visited with
so severe a penalty as that which the Ecclesiastical Reservation
held suspended over the apostacy of the spiritual princes.
Even to the last, the Romish Church preferred to risk to loss of every thing
by force, than voluntarily to yield the smallest matter to justice.
The loss was accidental and might be repaired; but the abandonment
of its pretensions, the concession of a single point to the Protestants,
would shake the foundations of the church itself. Even in the treaty of peace
this principle was not lost sight of. Whatever in this peace was yielded
to the Protestants was always under condition. It was expressly declared,
that affairs were to remain on the stipulated footing only till
the next general council, which was to be called with the view of effecting
an union between the two confessions. Then only, when this last attempt
should have failed, was the religious treaty to become valid and conclusive.
However little hope there might be of such a reconciliation,
however little perhaps the Romanists themselves were in earnest with it,
still it was something to have clogged the peace with these stipulations.

Thus this religious treaty, which was to extinguish for ever
the flames of civil war, was, in fact, but a temporary truce,
extorted by force and necessity; not dictated by justice,
nor emanating from just notions either of religion or toleration.
A religious treaty of this kind the Roman Catholics were as incapable
of granting, to be candid, as in truth the Lutherans were unqualified
to receive. Far from evincing a tolerant spirit towards the Roman Catholics,
when it was in their power, they even oppressed the Calvinists;
who indeed just as little deserved toleration, since they were unwilling