CONTROVERSY BETWEEN ROME AND THE REFORMERS

 

The emperor, meanwhile, pursued the plan of dissimulation with which he had set out, employing every art to amuse the protestants, and to quiet their fears and jealousies. For this purpose he contrived to have an interview with the landgrave of Hesse, the most active of all the confederates, and the most suspicious of his designs. To him he made such warm professions of his concern for the happiness of Germany, and of his aversion to all violent measures; he denied, in such express terms, his having entered into any league, or having begun any military preparations which should give any just cause of alarm to the protestants, as seem to have dispelled all the landgrave's doubts and apprehensions, and sent him away fully satisfied of his pacific intentions. This artifice was of great advantage, and effectually answered the purpose for which it was employed. The landgrave, upon his leaving Spires, where he had been admitted to this interview, went to Worms, where the Smalkaldic confederates were assembled, and gave them such a flattering representation of tile emperor’s favorable disposition towards them, that they, who were too apt, as well from the temper of the German nation, as from the genius of all great associations or bodies of men, to be slow, and dilatory, and undecisive in their deliberations, thought there was no necessity of taking any immediate measures against danger, which appeared to be distant or imaginary.

Such events, however, soon occurred, as staggered the credit which the Protestants had given to the emperor's declarations. The council of Trent, though still composed of a small number of Italian and Spanish prelates, without a single deputy from many of the kingdoms, which it assumed a right of binding by its decrees, being ashamed of its long inactivity, proceeded now to settle articles of the greatest importance. Having begun with examining the first and chief point in controversy between the church of Rome and the reformers, concerning the rule which should be held as supreme and decisive in matters of faith, the council, by its infallible authority, determined [Apr. 8], “That the books to which the designation of Apocryphal hath been given, are of equal authority with those which were received by the Jews and primitive Christians into the sacred canon; that the traditions handed down from the apostolic age, and preserved in the church, are entitled to as much regard as the doctrines and precepts which the inspired authors have committed to writing; that the Latin translation of the scriptures, made or revised by St. Jerome, and known by the name of the Vulgate translation, should be read in churches, and appealed to in the schools as authentic and canonical”. Against all who disclaimed the truth of these tenets, anathemas were denounced in the name, and by the authority, of the Holy Ghost. The decision of these points, which undermined the main foundation of the Lutheran system, was a plain warning to the protestants what judgment they might expect when the council should have leisure to take into consideration the particular and subordinate articles of their creed.

This discovery of the council’s readiness to condemn the opinions of the protestants was soon followed by a striking instance of the pope’s resolution to punish such as embraced them. The appeal of the canons of Cologne against their archbishop having been carried to Rome, Paul eagerly seized on that opportunity, both of displaying the extent of his own authority, and of teaching the German ecclesiastics the danger of revolting, from the established church. As no person appeared in behalf of the archbishop, he was held to be convicted of the crime of heresy, and a papal bull was issued [Apr. 16], depriving him of his ecclesiastical dignity, inflicting on him the sentence of excommunication, and absolving his subjects from the oath of allegiance which they had taken to him as their civil superior. The countenance which he had given to the Lutheran heresy was the only crime imputed to him, as well as the only reason assigned to justify the extraordinary severity of this decree. The protestants could hardly believe that Paul, how zealous soever he might be to defend the established system, or to humble those who invaded it, would have ventured to proceed to such extremities against a prince and elector of the empire, without having previously secured such powerful protection as would render his censure something more than an impotent and despicable sally of resentment. They were, of course, deeply alarmed at this sentence against the archbishop, considering it as a sure indication of the malevolent intentions not only of the pope, but of the emperor, against the whole party.

Upon this fresh revival of their fears, with such violence as is natural to men roused from a false security, and conscious of their having been deceived, Charles saw that it now became necessary to throw aside the mask, and to declare openly what part he determined to act. By a long series of artifice and fallacy, he had gained so much time, that his measures, though not altogether ripe for execution, were in great forwardness. The pope, by his proceedings against the elector of Cologne, as well as by the decree of the council, had precipitated matters into such a situation, as rendered a breach between the emperor and the protestants almost unavoidable. Charles had, therefore, no choice left him, but either to take part with them in overturning what the see of Rome had determined, or to support the authority of the church openly by force of arms. Nor did the pope think it enough to have brought the emperor under a necessity of acting; he pressed him to begin his operations immediately, and to carry them on with such vigour as could not fail of securing success. Transported by his zeal against heresy, Paul forgot all the prudent and cautious maxims of the papal see, with regard to the danger of extending the Imperial authority beyond due bounds; and, in order to crush the Lutherans, he was willing to contribute towards raising up a master that might one day prove formidable to himself as well as to the rest of Italy.

But, besides the certain expectation of assistance from the pope, Charles was now secure from any danger of interruption to his designs by the Turkish arms. His negotiations at the Porte, which he had carried on with great assiduity since the peace of Crespy, were on the point of being terminated in such a manner as he desired. Solyman, partly in compliance with the French king, who, in order to avoid the disagreeable obligation of joining the emperor against his ancient ally, labored with great zeal to bring about an accommodation between them, and partly from its being necessary to turn his arms towards the east, where the Persians threatened to invade his dominions, consented without difficulty to a truce for five years. The chief article of it was, that each should retain possession of what he now held in Hungary; and Ferdinand, as a sacrifice to the pride of the sultan, submitted to pay an annual tribute of fifty thousand crowns.

But it was upon the aid and concurrence of the Germans themselves that the emperor relied with the greatest confidence. The Germanic body, he knew, was of such vast strength, as to be invincible if it were united, and that it was only by employing its own force that he could hope to subdue it. Happily for him, the union of the several members of this great system was so feeble, the whole frame was so loosely compacted, and its different parts tended so violently towards separation from each other, that it was almost impossible for it, on any important emergence, to join in a general or vigorous effort. In the present juncture, the sources of discord were as many, and as various, as had been known on any occasion. The Roman catholics, animated with zeal in defence of their religion proportional to the fierceness with which it had been attacked, were eager to second any attempt to humble those innovators, who had overturned it in many provinces, and endangered it in more. John and Albert of Brandenburg, as well as several other princes, incensed at the haughtiness and rigor with which the duke of Brunswick had been treated by the confederates of Smalkalde, were impatient to rescue him, and to be revenged on them. Charles observed, with satisfaction, the working of those passions in their minds, and counting on them as sure auxiliaries whenever he should think it proper to act, he found it, in the mean time, more necessary to moderate than to inflame their rage.

Such was the situation of affairs, such the discernment with which the emperor foresaw and provided for every event, when the diet of the empire met at Ratisbon. Many of the Roman catholic members appeared there in person, but most of the confederates of Smalkalde, under pretence of being unable to hear the expense occasioned by the late unnecessary frequency of such assemblies, sent only deputies. Their jealousy of the emperor, together with an apprehension that violence might perhaps be employed, in order to force their approbation of what he should propose in the diet, was the true cause of their absence. The speech with which the emperor opened the diet was extremely artful. After professing, in common form, his regard for the prosperity of the Germanic body, and declaring, that, in order to bestow his whole attention upon the re-establishment of its order and tranquility, he had at present abandoned all other cares, rejected the most pressing solicitations of his other subjects to reside among them, and postponed affairs of the greatest importance; he took notice, with some disapprobation, that his disinterested example had not been imitated; many members of chief consideration having neglected to attend an assembly to which he had repaired with such manifest inconvenience to himself. He then mentioned their unhappy dissensions about religion; lamented the ill success of his past endeavors to compose them; complained of the abrupt dissolution of the late conference, and craved their advice with regard to the best and most effectual method of restoring union to the churches of Germany, together with that happy agreement in articles of faith, which their ancestors had found to be of no less advantage to their civil interest, than becoming their Christian profession.

By this gracious and popular method of consulting the members of the diet, rather than of obtruding upon them any opinion of his own, besides the appearance of great moderation, and the merit of paying much respect to their judgment, the emperor dexterously avoided discovering his own sentiments, and reserved to himself, as his only part, that of carrying into execution what they should recommend. Nor was he less secure of such a decision as he wished to obtain, by referring it wholly to themselves.

 

THE ANTI-PROTESTANT LEAGUE ON THE ROAD