e.
The scene of the authentic Counter-Reformation was central Europe, and
especially those countries which were the scene of the Reformation
itself, Germany and Austria. There the tide, which with little
interruption had flowed for fifty years, was effectually turned back,
and regions which were Protestant became Catholic again. There too
the means employed were not those prevailing under the crown of Spain.
They were weapons supplied and suggested by the Peace of Religion,
harmoniously forged by the Lutherans themselves at the Diet of 1555.
There was to be no mutual persecution, taking persecution to imply the
penalty of death, and a persecutor to mean homicide, in the sense to
which Europe was accustomed. No subject, on either side, could be
deprived of life or property, could be tortured or imprisoned, or even
banished, if there were numbers, for that would be ruinous to the
State. Governments were forced to oppress him wisely, depriving him
of Church and school, of preacher and schoolmaster; and by those
nameless arts with which the rich used to coerce the poor in the good
old days, and which, under the name of influence, were not considered
altogether infamous by Englishmen in the last generation. When the
people had been deprived of their pastors, the children were sent to
Catholic schools. Fervent preachers came among them, Jesuits, or it
might be Capuchins, widely different in morality, earnestness,
education, and eloquence from the parish clergy, whose deficiencies
gave such succour to Luther. Most of those who, having no turn for
controversy, had been repelled by scandals were easily reconciled.
Others, who were conscious of disagreement with the theology of the
last thousand years, and were uninfluenced by the secondary and
auxiliary motives, had now to face disputants of a more serious type
than the adversaries of Luther, and to face them unsupported by
experts of their own. Where there had been indifference, ignorance,
disorder, in the easy-going days of the Renaissance, there were now
the closest concentration of efforts, strict discipline and regularity
of life, a better though narrower education, and the most strenuous
and effective oratory. Therefore it was by honest conviction as well
as by calculated but not illegal coercion that the Reformation was
driven back, and Protestants who had been almost the nation became no
more than a bare majority. The original spring ran dry, and the
expansive