A Short History of Germany

by Mary Platt Parmele

In 1563, after eighteen years' deliberation, the work of this Council was finished. The cardinal doctrines of purgatory, absolution, celibacy, invocation of saints, censorship of press, etc., etc., were reaffirmed, and terrible anathemas pronounced against such as should reject them.

Thus was created a chasm which nothing could ever bridge, eternally dividing the old religion from the new.

Another tremendously re-enforcing agent was at work in Loyola's Society of Jesus, which was to be to the Church what the brain is to the human body. In 1540 Loyola's ten disciples received the papal blessing. In 1600 there were ten million Jesuits, and in 1700 twenty millions!

CHAPTER X.

It was the invincible march of Protestantism in the land of its birth which brought about this buttressing of the old belief and this adopting of fresh methods for its efficiency.

When Ferdinand died in 1564 the great majority of the German people had become Protestants. The Empire was honeycombed with the new faith. Even in Austria, that everlasting stronghold of Papacy, the Catholics were in a minority. True to the traditions of the past, Bavaria, the home of the ancient Welfs, was the one thoroughly zealous and obedient champion of the Pope in all Germany.

It seemed as if the great conflict was almost over. But it had not even commenced!

The history of this great movement would have been very different, had it been carried on steadily under one leader. But it had four! Those devout souls who believed they had found in the simple gospel truths of Protestantism a religion in which all might unite were soon convinced of their mistake.

Lulled by the apparent triumph of the new faith, reformers set about the task of defining the belief and correcting the errors of Protestant doctrine. To the followers of Calvin the belief of the Lutherans became almost as abhorrent as Papacy itself, while the Lutherans were again subdivided into an extreme and a moderate party; the one following to the letter the doctrines of Luther, and the other the more modified views of Melancthon. Not only men but states were divided and in bitter strife over these differences, so that the Emperor Ferdinand had said, "Instead of being of one mind they are so disunited, have so many different beliefs, the God of truth surely cannot be with them!"