by the defeat at
Muhlberg. The Catholic reaction went on at full speed in spite of the
destruction of the Armada. It is difficult to say whether the violence
of the first blow or of the recoil was the greater. Fifty years after
the Lutheran separation, Catholicism could scarcely maintain itself on
the shores of the Mediterranean. A hundred years after the separation,
Protestantism could scarcely maintain itself on the shores of the
Baltic. The causes of this memorable turn in human affairs well deserve
to be investigated.

The contest between the two parties bore some resemblance to the
fencing-match in Shakespeare: "Laertes wounds Hamlet; then, in
scuffling, they change rapiers, and Hamlet wounds Laertes." The war
between Luther and Leo was a war between firm faith and unbelief,
between zeal and apathy, between energy and indolence, between
seriousness and frivolity, between a pure morality and vice. Very
different was the war which degenerate Protestantism had to wage against
regenerate Catholicism. To the debauchees, the poisoners, the atheists,
who had worn the tiara during the generation which preceded the
Reformation, had succeeded Popes who, in religious fervor and severe
sanctity of manners, might bear a comparison with Cyprian or Ambrose.
The Order of Jesuits alone could show many men not inferior in
sincerity, constancy, courage, and austerity of life, to the Apostles of
the Reformation. But, while danger had thus called forth in the bosom of
the Church of Rome many of the highest qualities of the Reformers, the
Reformers had contracted some of the corruptions which had been justly
censured in the Church of Rome. They had become lukewarm and worldly.
Their great old leaders had been borne to the grave, and had left no
successors. Among the Protestant princes there was little or no hearty
Protestant feeling. Elizabeth herself was a Protestant rather from
policy than from firm conviction. James the First, in order to effect
his favorite object of marrying his son into one of the great
Continental houses, was ready to make immense concessions to Rome, and
even to admit a modified primacy in the Pope. Henry the Fourth twice
abjured the reformed doctrines from interested motives. The Elector of
Saxony, the natural head of the Protestant party in Germany, submitted
to become, at the most important crisis of the struggle, a tool in the
hands of the Papists. Among the Catholic sovereigns, on the other hand,
we find