sertion;
rapid and unhesitating decision, against conscientious doubts; a spirit
of energy, working laboriously with much deliberation and scheming
after distant aims, against defective discipline; and an urging to
unity, against a striving for separation.

These opposing powers appeared everywhere, especially in politics and
at the courts of princes. Protestantism in its unfinished shape, though
it had elevated the people, was no help to the formation of the
character of the German princes; it had raised higher their external
power, but it had lessened their inward stability; their youthful
training became in general too theological to be practical. However
immoral many of them were, they all suffered from conscientious doubts;
and there was no ready answer for these doubts, such as the Roman
Catholic confessor had always in store for them. The Protestant princes
stood isolated; there was no firm bond of union between the Churches of
the different states, but much trivial quarrelling and bitter hatred,
not only between Lutherans and Reformers, but even amongst the
followers of the Augsburg confession; and this diminished the strength
of the princes. Whilst the priests of the Roman Catholic Church did
their best to unite their rulers, the Protestant ecclesiastics helped
to increase the disunion of theirs. So it is not surprising, that the
Protestants for a long time stood at a disadvantage in their political
struggle with the old faith. The Germans had not yet found, and did not
for centuries attain to, the new constitution of State, which transfers
the mainspring of government from the accidental will of the ruler, to
the conscience of the nation, and which places in a regulated path,
citizens of talent and integrity as advisers to the crown; public
opinion was still weak, the daily press not yet in existence, and the
relation between the political rights of the princes and the people
very undefined.

Protestantism had everywhere produced political convulsions, from the
peasant war even into the following century. The Reformation had
unloosed all tongues, it had given the Germans a freer judgment upon
their position as citizens, and had inspired individuals with the
courage to fight for their own convictions. The peasant now loudly
murmured against exorbitant burdens, the members of guilds against the
selfish dominion of the corporations, and the noble members of the
provincial estates against the extravagant demands