while the interpretation of the religious treaty was a never-ending
subject of dispute. Each party maintained that every step taken
by its opponent was an infraction of the peace, while of every movement
of its own it was asserted that it was essential to its maintenance.
Yet all the measures of the Catholics did not, as their opponents alleged,
proceed from a spirit of encroachment -- many of them were
the necessary precautions of self-defence. The Protestants had shown
unequivocally enough what the Romanists might expect if they were
unfortunate enough to become the weaker party. The greediness of the former
for the property of the church, gave no reason to expect indulgence; --
their bitter hatred left no hope of magnanimity or forbearance.

But the Protestants, likewise, were excusable if they too
placed little confidence in the sincerity of the Roman Catholics.
By the treacherous and inhuman treatment which their brethren in Spain,
France, and the Netherlands, had suffered; by the disgraceful subterfuge
of the Romish princes, who held that the Pope had power to relieve them
from the obligation of the most solemn oaths; and above all,
by the detestable maxim, that faith was not to be kept with heretics,
the Roman Church, in the eyes of all honest men, had lost its honour.
No engagement, no oath, however sacred, from a Roman Catholic, could satisfy
a Protestant. What security then could the religious peace afford, when,
throughout Germany, the Jesuits represented it as a measure of
mere temporary convenience, and in Rome itself it was solemnly repudiated.

The General Council, to which reference had been made in the treaty,
had already been held in the city of Trent; but, as might have been foreseen,
without accommodating the religious differences, or taking a single step to
effect such accommodation, and even without being attended by the Protestants.
The latter, indeed, were now solemnly excommunicated by it in the name