most as
fatal as that between Protestants and Papists. There was even a talk, at
a little later period, of excluding those of the "reformed" church from
the benefits of the peace of Passau. The princes had got the Augsburg
confession and the abbey-lands into the bargain; the peasants had got the
Augsburg confession without the abbey-lands, and were to believe exactly
what their masters believed. This was the German-Lutheran
sixteenth-century idea of religious freedom. Neither prince nor peasant
stirred in behalf of the struggling Christians in the United Provinces,
battling, year after year, knee-deep in blood, amid blazing cities and
inundated fields, breast to breast with the yellow jerkined pikemen of
Spain and Italy, with the axe and the faggot and the rack of the Holy
Inquisition distinctly visible behind them. Such were the realities which
occupied the Netherlanders in those days, not watery beams of theological
moonshine, fantastical catechism-making, intermingled with scenes of riot
and wantonness, which drove old John of Nassau half frantic; with
banquetting and guzzling, drinking and devouring, with unchristian
flaunting and wastefulness of apparel, with extravagant and wanton
dancing, and other lewd abominations; all which, the firm old reformer
prophesied, would lead to the destruction of Germany.

For the mass, slow moving but apparently irresistible, of Spanish and
papistical absolutism was gradually closing over Christendom. The
Netherlands were the wedge by which alone the solid bulk could be riven
asunder. It was the cause of German, of French, of English liberty, for
which the Provinces were contending. It was not surprising that they were
bitter, getting nothing in their hour of distress from the land of Luther
but dogmas and Augsburg catechisms instead of money and gunpowder, and
seeing German reiters galloping daily to reinforce the army of Parma in
exchange for Spanish ducats.

Brave old La Noue, with the iron arm, noblest of Frenchmen and
Huguenots--who had just spent five years in Spanish bondage, writing
military discourses in a reeking dungeon, filled with toads and vermin,
after fighting the battle of liberty for a life-time, and with his brave
son already in the Netherlands emulating his father's valour on the same
field--denounced at a little later day, the lukewarmness of Protestant
Germany with whimsical vehemence:--"I am astounded," he cried, "that
these princes are not ashamed of themse