ut producing on the world at large by their
conduct the precise effect which Henry had foretold. The world at large,
looking to acts rather than to words, regarded the interview as a
contrivance to reconcile Francis and the emperor through the intervention
of the pope, as a preliminary for a packed council, and for a holy war
against the Lutherans[616]--a combination of ominous augury to Christendom,
from the consequences of which, if Germany was to be the first sufferer,
England would be inevitably the second.

Meanwhile, as the French alliance threatened to fail, the English
government found themselves driven at last to look for a connection among
those powers from whom they had hitherto most anxiously disconnected
themselves. At such a time. Protestant Germany, not Catholic France, was
England's natural friend. The Reformation was essentially a Teutonic
movement; the Germans, the English, the Scotch, the Swedes, the Hollanders,
all were struggling on their various roads towards an end essentially the
same. The same dangers threatened them, the same inspiration moved them;
and in the eyes of the orthodox Catholics they were united in a black
communion of heresy. Unhappily, though this identity was obvious to their
enemies, it was far from obvious to themselves. The odium theologicum is
ever hotter between sections of the same party which are divided by
trifling differences, than between the open representatives of antagonist
principles; and Anglicans and Lutherans, instead of joining hands across
the Channel, endeavoured only to secure each a recognition of themselves at
the expense of the other. The English plumed themselves on their orthodoxy.
They were "not as those publicans," heretics, despisers of the keys,
disobedient to authority; they desired only the independence of their
national church, and they proved their zeal for the established faith with
all the warmth of persecution. To the Germans national freedom was of
wholly minor moment, in comparison with the freedom of the soul; the
orthodoxy of England was as distasteful to the disciples of Luther as the
orthodoxy of Rome--and the interests of Europe were sacrificed on both
sides to this foolish and fatal disunion. Circumstances indeed would not
permit the division to remain in its first intensity, and their common
danger compelled the two nations into a partial understanding. Yet the
reconciliation, imperfect to the last, was at the outset all but
impossible