for the reformation of others, is to begin by amending oneself.”  He commented upon the manifest impropriety of scandalous indulgences:  of selling the sacred offices of the Church to the highest bidder, regardless of character; of extorting fees for the administration of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper; of offering prayers and performing the services of public devotion in a language which the people could not understand; and other similar and most palpable abuses.  Even the kings of France and Spain united with the emperor in these remonstrances.

It is difficult now to conceive of the astonishment and indignation with which the pope and his adherents received these very reasonable suggestions, coming not from the Protestants but from the most staunch advocates of the papacy.  The see of Rome, corrupt to its very core, would yield nothing.  The more senseless and abominable any of its corruptions were, the more tenaciously did pope and cardinals cling to them.  At last the emperor, in despair of seeing any thing accomplished, requested that the assembly might be dissolved, saying, “Nothing good can be expected, even if it continue its sittings for a hundred years.”

CHAPTER XI.

DEATH OF FERDINAND I.—­ACCESSION OF MAXIMILIAN II.

From 1562 to 1576.

The Council of Trent.—­Spread of the Reformation.—­Ferdinand’s Attempt to Influence the Pope.—­His Arguments against Celibacy.—­Stubbornness of the Pope.—­Maximilian II.—­Displeasure of Ferdinand.—­Motives for not Abjuring the Catholic Faith.—­Religious Strife in Europe.—­Maximilian’s Address to Charles IX.—­Mutual Toleration.—­Romantic Pastime of War.—­Heroism of Nicholas, Count Of Zrini.—­Accession of Power to Austria.—­Accession of Rhodolph III.—­Death of Maximilian.

This celebrated council of Trent, which was called with the hope that by a spirit of concession and reform the religious dissensions which agitated Europe might be adjusted, declared, in the very bravado of papal intolerance, the very worst abuses of the Church to be essential articles of faith, which could only be renounced at the peril of eternal condemnation, and thus presented an insuperable barrier to any reconciliation between the Catholics and the Protestants.  Ferdinand was disappointed, and yet did not venture to break with the pope by withholding his assent from the decrees which were enacted.

The Lutheran doctrines had spread widely through Ferdinand’s hereditary States of Austria.  Several of the professors in the university at Vienna had embraced those views; and quite a number of the most powerful and opulent of the territorial lords even maintained Protestant chaplains at their castles.  The majority of the inhabitants of the Austrian States had, in the course of a few years, become Protestants.  Though Ferdinand did every thing he dared to do to check their progress, forbidding the circulation of