layed energy and moderation, but had shown no
power of governing the churches they had founded. They fell into the
background, and made way for lay politicians. Questions of
fundamental principle disappeared, and questions of management
prevailed. Things became less spontaneous and less tumultuous as
action was guided by statesmen; and, in defiance of Luther, the
governments assumed the direction of affairs, and formed the League of
Schmalkalden for the defence of Protestant interests. They were
preparing for civil war, and now by degrees most of the German princes
went over.

V

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION

THE REFORMATION was extended and established without arousing any
strong reaction among Catholics, or inspiring them with a policy.
Under the influence of secular interests, profane literature and art,
it was a time of slackness in spiritual life. Religious men, like
the Cardinals Egidius, Carvajal, and Campeggio, knew, and
acknowledged, and deplored, as sincerely as Adrian VI, the growing
defects of the ill-governed Church; and at each Conclave the whole of
the Sacred College bound itself by capitulations under oath to put an
effective check on the excesses of the court of Rome. But at the
Lateran Council the same men who had imposed on Leo the obligation to
revoke the indulgences suffered them to be renewed; and those who held
the language of Erasmus were confronted by a resisting body of
officials for whom reform was ruin. Rome flourished on money obtained
from the nations in return for ecclesiastical treasures, for promotion
and patronage, for indulgences and dispensations. With the loss of
Germany the sources of revenue that remained became more necessary;
and it was certain that they would be damaged by reform. Chieregato,
the bishop who carried to the Diet of Nuremberg that message from
Adrian VI of which I spoke in the last lecture, related in his Memoirs
that there was a disposition at one moment to take Luther very
seriously, and to avert peril by making the changes he suggested, but
that it was decided to repel the attack. There is no other authority
for the story, and we only know of it through Father Paul, whom
Macaulay admired as the best modern historian. There is a book
attributed to Father Paul in which the use of poison is recommended to
the Venetian government. We cannot take our history out of Newgate,
and until his authorship is disproved his solitary testimony is
insufficient.