oman Catholics really meditated any evil against the Protestants in
Germany, the probability was that the blow would fall on the south
rather than the north, because, in Lower Germany, the Protestants were
connected together through a long unbroken tract of country, and could
therefore easily combine for their mutual support; while those in the
south, detached from each other, and surrounded on all sides by Roman
Catholic states, were exposed to every inroad. If, moreover, as was to
be expected, the Catholics availed themselves of the divisions amongst
the Protestants, and levelled their attack against one of the religious
parties, it was the Calvinists who, as the weaker, and as being besides
excluded from the religious treaty, were apparently in the greatest
danger, and upon them would probably fall the first attack.

Both these circumstances took place in the dominions of the Elector
Palatine, which possessed, in the Duke of Bavaria, a formidable
neighbour, and which, by reason of their defection to Calvinism,
received no protection from the Religious Peace, and had little hope of
succour from the Lutheran states. No country in Germany had experienced
so many revolutions in religion in so short a time as the Palatinate.
In the space of sixty years this country, an unfortunate toy in the
hands of its rulers, had twice adopted the doctrines of Luther, and
twice relinquished them for Calvinism. The Elector Frederick III.
first abandoned the confession of Augsburg, which his eldest son and
successor, Lewis, immediately re-established. The Calvinists throughout
the whole country were deprived of their churches, their preachers and
even their teachers banished beyond the frontiers; while the prince, in
his Lutheran zeal, persecuted them even in his will, by appointing none
but strict and orthodox Lutherans as the guardians of his son, a minor.
But this illegal testament was disregarded by his brother the Count
Palatine, John Casimir, who, by the regulations of the Golden Bull,
assumed the guardianship and administration of the state. Calvinistic
teachers were given to the Elector Frederick IV., then only nine years
of age, who were ordered, if necessary, to drive the Lutheran heresy out
of the soul of their pupil with blows. If such was the treatment of the
sovereign, that of the subjects may be easily conceived.

It was under this Frederick that the Palatine Court exerted itself so
vigorously to unite the Protestant state