ngs and are
persecuting each other to such extent as to give good hope that the
devilish weight and burthen of them will go to perdition and shame of
itself, and the heretics all do bloody execution upon each other.
Certainly if ever a golden time existed for exterminating the heretics,
it is the present time."

The Imperial party took their leave of Dresden, believing themselves to
have secured the electoral vote of Saxony; the Elector hoping for
protection to his interests in the duchies through that sequestration to
which Barneveld had opposed such vigorous resistance. There had been much
slavish cringing before these Catholic potentates by the courtiers of
Dresden, somewhat amazing to the ruder churls of Saxony, the common
people, who really believed in the religion which their prince had
selected for them and himself.

And to complete the glaring contrast, Ferdinand and Matthias had scarcely
turned their backs before tremendous fulminations upon the ancient church
came from the Elector and from all the doctors of theology in Saxony.

For the jubilee of the hundredth anniversary of the Reformation was
celebrated all over Germany in the autumn of this very year, and nearly
at the exact moment of all this dancing, and fuddling, and pig shooting
at Dresden in honour of emperors and cardinals. And Pope Paul V. had
likewise ordained a jubilee for true believers at almost the same time.

The Elector did not mince matters in his proclamation from any regard to
the feelings of his late guests. He called on all Protestants to rejoice,
"because the light of the Holy Gospel had now shone brightly in the
electoral dominions for a hundred years, the Omnipotent keeping it
burning notwithstanding the raging and roaring of the hellish enemy and
all his scaly servants."

The doctors of divinity were still more emphatic in their phraseology.
They called on all professors and teachers of the true Evangelical
churches, not only in Germany but throughout Christendom, to keep the
great jubilee. They did this in terms not calculated certainly to smother
the flames of religious and party hatred, even if it had been possible at
that moment to suppress the fire. "The great God of Heaven," they said,
"had caused the undertaking of His holy instrument Mr. Doctor Martin
Luther to prosper. Through His unspeakable mercy he has driven away the
Papal darkness and caused the sun of righteousness once more to beam upon
the world. The old idolatr