more gratifying to him than the rancour with which the Protestants alternately
persecuted each other. Who could condemn the Roman Catholics,
if they laughed at the audacity with which the Reformers had presumed
to announce the only true belief? -- if from Protestants they borrowed
the weapons against Protestants? -- if, in the midst of this
clashing of opinions, they held fast to the authority of their own church,
for which, in part, there spoke an honourable antiquity,
and a yet more honourable plurality of voices. But this division
placed the Protestants in still more serious embarrassments.
As the covenants of the treaty applied only to the partisans
of the Confession, their opponents, with some reason, called upon them
to explain who were to be recognized as the adherents of that creed.
The Lutherans could not, without offending conscience,
include the Calvinists in their communion, except at the risk of converting
a useful friend into a dangerous enemy, could they exclude them.
This unfortunate difference opened a way for the machinations of the Jesuits
to sow distrust between both parties, and to destroy the unity
of their measures. Fettered by the double fear of their direct adversaries,
and of their opponents among themselves, the Protestants lost for ever
the opportunity of placing their church on a perfect equality
with the Catholic. All these difficulties would have been avoided,
and the defection of the Calvinists would not have prejudiced
the common cause, if the point of union had been placed simply
in the abandonment of Romanism, instead of in the Confession of Augsburg.

But however divided on other points, they concurred in this --
that the security which had resulted from equality of power
could only be maintained by the preservation of that balance.
In the meanwhile, the continual reforms of one party,
and the opposing measures of the other, kept both upon the watch,