asure of Ferdinand.--Motives for not
Abjuring the Catholic Faith.--Religious Strife in Europe.--Maximilian's
Address to Charles IX.--Mutual Toleration.--Romantic Pastime of
War.--Heroism of Nicholas, Count Of Zrini.--Accession of Power to
Austria.--Accession of Rhodolph III.--Death of Maximilian.

This celebrated council of Trent, which was called with the hope that by
a spirit of concession and reform the religious dissensions which
agitated Europe might be adjusted, declared, in the very bravado of
papal intolerance, the very worst abuses of the Church to be essential
articles of faith, which could only be renounced at the peril of eternal
condemnation, and thus presented an insuperable barrier to any
reconciliation between the Catholics and the Protestants. Ferdinand was
disappointed, and yet did not venture to break with the pope by
withholding his assent from the decrees which were enacted.

The Lutheran doctrines had spread widely through Ferdinand's hereditary
States of Austria. Several of the professors in the university at Vienna
had embraced those views; and quite a number of the most powerful and
opulent of the territorial lords even maintained Protestant chaplains at
their castles. The majority of the inhabitants of the Austrian States
had, in the course of a few years, become Protestants. Though Ferdinand
did every thing he dared to do to check their progress, forbidding the
circulation of Luther's translation of the Bible, and throwing all the
obstacles he could in the way of Protestant worship, he was compelled to
grant them very considerable toleration, and to overlook the infraction
of his decrees, that he might secure their aid to repel the Turks.
Providence seemed to overrule the Moslem invasion for the protection of
the Protestant faith. Notwithstanding all the efforts of Ferdinand, the
reformers gained ground in Austria as in other parts of Germany.

The two articles upon which the Protestants at this time placed most
stress were the right of the clergy to marry and the administration of
the communion under both kinds, as it was called; that is, that the
communicants should partake of both the bread and the wine. Ferdinand,
having failed entirely in inducing the council to submit to any reform,
opened direct communication with the pope to obtain for his subjects
indulgence in respect to these two articles. In advocacy of this measure
he wrote:

"In Bohemia no persuasion, no argument, no violenc