Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/47

 dealt with in a compulsory way in regard to their faith and worship. The former of these two points, however, the Catholics would not yield, and ecclesiastics could accede to the Lutheran Confession only with loss of place.

The disadvantage to the Lutherans of this one enactment is incalculable. It is true that from our advanced point of view no one can be allowed to carry over to another religious confession anything but his own person. But both parties in this contest held the opposite opinion, namely, that the prince and pastor might rule the faith of their people, and only made exceptional to this rule the cases of Catholic ecclesiastics becoming Protestants. With this decision in their way, none, from the great ecclesiastical princes down to the parish clergy, could pass over to the Lutheran faith without the prospect of going forth as a kind of beggars in the world.

Nor is this difficulty imaginary. Gebhard, Archbishop and Elector of Cologne, toward the close of the sixteenth century, passed over to the Protestant Church, and attempted accordingly to reform the diocese of Cologne. He married a certain Countess Agnes. But he was finally driven from his position in accordance with this provision of the religious peace of Augsburg, and the territory of the archiepiscopal see of Cologne, which would, had Gebhard carried out his purpose, have become Protestant, is now the Catholic stronghold of Germany. Nor is it improbable that all the ecclesiastical princes might, at least nominally, have joined the Protestant cause but for this so-called Ecclesiastical Reservation in the religious peace of Augsburg.

We shall now notice briefly the elements of the coming struggle, which existed during the interval of about sixty years—from the conclusion of the religious peace to the