almost a matter of surprise that hostilities did not break out sooner;
and the very fact that external warfare was so long suppressed, may
account for the violence and animosity of the first conflict. The
first religious peace was in reality a mere truce--another prolonged
interim which still left many debateable points, that with the most
honest intentions in both parties it was extremely difficult, and
almost impossible to settle by a peaceful and equitable adjustment.
Where so much combustible matter existed, the merest accident might
enkindle a conflagration. This first occurred in Bohemia, where the
old insurrection of the Hussites had been put down by force--(the only
way in which on its first outbreak, it could have been suppressed) but
where as it now appeared that no vital remedy had been applied to the
roots of the disorder, much diseased and inflammable matter yet
remained. Still the revolt of Bohemia was not the only cause or
subject of a war, which some historians have considered rather as a
complicated series of wars, partially varying in their object. The
whole country--the age itself seemed involved in warfare; and war
appeared as the permanent policy, the ruling spirit, the inveterate
habit, and natural necessity of mankind. As a masterly hand[11] has
seized and pourtrayed many events and incidents--many scenes and acts
of this great tragedy--the religious feelings, and steadfast and
inflexible character of the Emperor Ferdinand II.--the high military
glory and conquests of the Swedish monarch Gustavus Adolphus--and the
genius and disastrous fate of the General Wallenstein;--it is
unnecessary to dwell at any length on these great historical
recollections, though the subject is inexhaustible in itself. The
peace which was the fruit of a high and imperious necessity, is in the
point of view we here take, of far greater interest.
With respect to indemnities, the treaty of Westphalia did not differ
from any other treaty of general peace, in which lands and parcels of
land are to be allotted, and even secularized, but where the number of
claimants exceeds the portions of allotment. Considered, too, as a
treaty which restored, and fixed on a firm basis, the peace of the
German Empire, the treaty of Westphalia did not depend in this, as in
other respects, on the force of its own articles, but on the general
system of European policy--on the principle of the balance of power
which regulated that policy--a principle which then, and still more in
later times, this treaty has much contributed to diffuse and extend.
But it is as a solemn pact of religious peace, that I wish here
particularly to consider the treaty of Westphalia--as the final
conclusion of all religious wars (and in this respect it has never
been materially violated)--as a lasting covenant of religious freedom,
whose main principle continues deeply implanted in the German mind,
while the two other relations in which this treaty remained so
incomplete, have for the most part lost their practical interest.
When we contemplate, too, this treaty as a noble labour of equity--the
successful work of unwearied industry, it has no parallel among
preceding treaties of peace; and hence it has become the basis of the
international law of Europe, and the textbook of diplomatic science in
modern times even down to our own days. Hence its long, undisturbed
duration. The nations--the age itself blessed it as the termination of
their long calamities; but far greater has been its influence on
after-times. The religious peace which it established, has become in
modern times a national habitude--a second nature to the German
people; for here and no where else must we look for its high
historical destination. It may be said that this, like every other
peace where the question of right remains the subject of dispute, is
only a truce--another mere interim--but it is a sacred and eternal
truce--a divine interim--that is to say, an intermediate state of
peace to last till God shall pronounce his final and unfailing award.
Of little moment to the philosopher, who considers this religious
peace in its vast bearings on the past, the present, and the momentous
future, is the reflection of the Jurist how far, and under what
restrictions this treaty in the altered circumstances of recent times,
can be considered as really valid and politically binding. For more
than any other treaty, has this solemn pact of religious peace been
interwoven with life, and become a reality. And when we take a wide
survey of the world, and include the future in our prospective ken, we
may say, that now that most of the separate articles of this treaty
have lost their value, and are no longer susceptible of execution, the
general spirit and object--the high import of this religious peace are
much nearer their fulfilment than formerly, when the practical
application of this treaty to particular cases was solely considered.
For that outward, but lasting covenant of religious peace--that holy
truce and interim forms the prelude and introduction to another,
higher, far more comprehensive, spiritual and divine peace, for which
our age--the epoch of a mighty regeneration--is irrevocably destined.
For how can Christianity, that is to say, eternal truth itself, be for
ever torn by divisions? The solution of the great problem of the last
three hundred years is by no means complicated, if we understand it in
this sense, but extremely simple. For, if as it is the object of all
true and elevated philosophy to prove, faith and science are really
and essentially one, faith will be restored to its former unity, and
then the schism between faith and science will cease.
Even as regards the political relations of the present times, this
great, fundamental treaty of peace has become a new Christian basis of
international law; for the spirit of Christianity requires that where
absolute justice, which is rarely attainable, cannot be found, a
system of peaceable and equitable compromise should before all things
be preferred. And hence this treaty has, for all succeeding times,
stamped the pacific and conservative policy of the great German power
of Austria. In France and England, indeed, religious wars afterwards
occurred; but they were merely the last agitations--the after-pains of
that fearful period of convulsive labour. These commotions were soon
allayed; and the example and precedent of this great religious
pacification in Germany, highly and universally admired as it was,
caused the principle of religious toleration to be tacitly
acknowledged as one which religion and necessity alike prescribed for
the imitation of all Europe.
Among the last and most frightful consequences of the general
revolution in the church, was the calamitous execution of King Charles
the First, which for the sake of order, I have previously adverted to,
and which took place a year after the establishment of the great
religious peace in Germany, and was followed forty years afterwards by
the great national peace of England--the final settlement of the
British constitution. Among the lamentable events which occurred at
that period in France, was the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the
last, and comparatively speaking, the most solid and durable of the
treaties of religious peace made in that country--a revocation which
can by no means astonish us, since this edict, destitute of all
internal and external guarantees, and which emanated solely from
absolute power, could not offer the same security, nor possess the
same durability, as the great, fundamental treaty of Westphalia. Yet
both in France and abroad, this measure, so appalling to the whole
European world, was, after so long an interval, extremely unexpected.
One of the effects of this measure was a cruel war of extermination
carried on in the mountains of the Cevennes against the Protestants,
who appear to have there derived a part of their tenets from some of
the earlier sects of the middle age. With respect to the revocation of
the Edict of Nantes, considering it merely as an act of authority, and
independently of the blow which it gave to the establishment of a
permanent religious peace, we can only say that such an abuse of power
on the part of the majority, (and it is to the influence of a
preponderant majority this act was ascribed by public opinion,) such
an abuse of power was a very dangerous precedent in the native land of
all violent reactions; and thus in our days the emigration of the
French nobility has been the great historical counter-blow to the
banishment of the Hugonots.
This violent expulsion of the Protestants could not even accomplish
the immediate object of its authors; for the spirit of Protestantism
had struck much too deep roots in France; and the evil could not be
removed by mere physical force, and without the application of a moral
remedy. The Protestant influence of French Switzerland was not
destroyed, and indeed it became still more powerful in the sequel;
while a far deeper wound was inflicted on the Catholic cause in France
by the spread of Jansenistical principles from the Netherlands, which,
supported as those principles were by great literary talents, exerted
then a mighty influence over the French nation. The essence of
Jansenism was the Rationalism of Calvin, combined with feelings of
pietism, and covered over with a deep varnish of Catholicism. It was
not the small party of the Jansenists of Utrecht, excluded as they
were from the church, and completely separated from the two great
religious parties of Europe, that could injure the Catholic cause in
France; but it was that modified or disguised Jansenism which had
crept into the very bosom of the Gallican church, and there grew up in
secret, that was most to be feared. All these partial or disguised
influences of the spirit of Protestantism derived their full sanction
from the theory of a Gallican church, such as it was proclaimed by the
supreme authority in the state. In the Protestant constitution of
England, indeed, the principle of a National church, like the
Anglican, (however such a principle may be opposed to the very essence
and fundamental maxims of Christianity), is not inconsistent with the
origin and general doctrines of that church. But in the Catholic
church, where the principle of national dissent is not admissible to a
like extent, such a system is perfectly absurd, and carries with it
its own refutation. The older theory of a Germanic church cannot be
here adduced as an historical precedent; for that theory was started
with a view to regulate the external relations of the church, or to
fix with more precision the limits of the Papal and Imperial power,
but did not refer to matters of doctrine, or to the internal
discipline of the church. Yet with this system of a Germanic church,
in the period of the Ghibelline ascendancy, many errors were mixed
up--the first germs of the schism afterwards consummated. But this
disguised, half-schism of the Gallican church, not less fatal in its
historical effects than the open schism of the Greeks, has contributed
very materially towards the decline of religion in France, down to the
period of the Restoration. It was not only the dispute with Rome,
which Louis XIV. carried to such fearful extremes; but the alliances
he so frequently renewed with the Swedish conqueror, and with the
Turkish power (still so formidable to the whole of Christendom), which
must, as coming from a Catholic quarter, have given much scandal to
the age; and we must at least allow that the foreign policy of Lewis
XIV. was scarcely in any respect Christian, and that it prepared the
way for that relaxation of moral and religious principles which took
place in France under his feebler successors. Lewis XIV. undoubtedly
well knew how to strengthen his regal prerogative, and render it more
absolute, and in this work, like several of his predecessors, evinced
the most systematic art, and the greatest determination of character.
But all the great problems of that age--all the religious questions
which then divided the world, which forming as they did the highest
object of all practical reflection and conduct were then so warmly
agitated, could not be brought to a permanent, adequate, and generally
satisfactory solution by the capricious mandates of power, or the
partial adjudications of regal authority. And if in this establishment
of absolute power in the interior, no regard is paid to the lawful
rights either of Foreign nations, or of the people at home, what
security is there that such a system will or can endure?
The splendour of the then French literature is one of the main pillars
on which the glory of that reign and century depends--this literature
which attained so high a degree of perfection, contains however to
some extent the germs of that political scepticism, and those
religious errors, which led to the disasters of subsequent times. An
Æsthetic cristicism of pure art, falls not within the limits of the
plan I have traced out to myself, and I can notice subjects of this
nature only inasmuch as they serve to denote the character of
particular ages and nations. As in no country was the spirit of the
middle age--the scholastico-romantic character of the first period of
European cultivation, both in the tone of feeling and the mode of
expression so long preserved, nor raised to such a state of high
refinement and beautiful perfection, as in Spain; so we may say that
the peculiar characteristic of the French mind in the age of Lewis
XIV. consisted in a studious and minute avoidance of the two principal
defects in the intellectual productions of the middle age--the
scholastic vagueness and obscurity in works of speculation on the one
hand, and the fantastic wildness in works of imagination on the other.
That choice and exquisite taste which prevails in all those models of
secular and clerical, historical, poetical, and philosophic eloquence,
which that age produced in such abundance, originated in this species
of precision averse from all excess and obscurity. And it was by the
clearness and lightness it owed to this principle that the French
language became, in the eighteenth century, the universal model and
most convenient medium, not only of conversation, but of epistolary
communication, among the polite classes of all European nations. But
in a comprehensive survey of general literature, this standard of a
pleasing style must not be considered as universally applicable, or
higher than any other; and without wishing to compare objects totally
dissimilar in themselves, I may observe that although among all the
classical writers and orators of that age, Bossuet is the greatest in
point of style, and at the same time the most solid and intellectual,
yet the _naive_ loquacity and infantine simplicity which
distinguish the incorrect, old French diction of St. Francis of Sales,
are peculiarly graceful and attractive in themselves; while in the
depth and clearness of the ascetic spirit, the Saint far surpasses the
former writer more celebrated in the world.
In the regular philosophy of the schools, the Latin was mostly the
prevailing language during the seventeenth century. In this the system
of Descartes then formed an epoch; or at least obtained very general
credit. His fanciful vortices in nature, as well as his rigid
demonstration by reason, of that principle which is exalted above all
reason, comprise rather the first germ of the various errors in the
physics and metaphysics of the succeeding age, than a sound basis of
true science, and a Christian philosophy of the human mind. Spinoza
was the immediate disciple of Descartes, but it is in Germany alone
that his rationalist system of pantheism, expressed as it is in the
forms of mathematical demonstration, and embellished by a morality
pure and noble, (at least in appearance and in its general outline,)
has been justly appreciated in its true metaphysical import, and has
found philosophic critics and imitators. But in its negative bearings,
the philosophy of Spinoza, together with other writings by that
inquirer and others on and against revelation, had a very extensive
influence in those times; and that philosophy forms the notable point
of transition to the metaphysical speculations of our own age. Socinus
had directed his attacks against the great mystery in the existence of
the living God--the Christian dogma of the Trinity. In the system of
Spinoza, philosophic Protestantism, or the progressive spirit of
negation, advanced one step further; for he denied the personal
existence, or the living personality of God, and endeavoured to
substitute for the notion of the God-head the empty idea of the
Infinite.
On the other hand, the systems of Bacon and Leibnitz were two
different foundations laid in that age for a higher and a better
philosophy--systems which by a more extensive developement and
harmonious combination of their parts might have been moulded into a
frame of phylosophy thoroughly Christian. Almost all the scientific
labours of Leibnitz were directed to this point, namely, the
demonstration, confirmation, and exemplification of the truths of
Christianity, by the aid of science. The vast system of spiritualism,
exalted far above all ideas of nature, which was propounded, or rather
sketched out by Leibnitz, (with the exception of some peculiar
opinions and mere hypotheses,) agrees perfectly with that purer
Platonism which all the Christian writers and fathers of the first
ages inculcated. And the fundamental principles of such a philosophy,
if exposed in their native clearness and simplicity and without
adventitious alloy, are the same which in their general spirit are to
be clearly traced, or are tacitly implied in the sacred Scriptures,
whose lofty purposes, however, rise far above the narrow forms and
limited sphere of philosophic investigation. How well Leibnitz
understood and appreciated, and how far he subscribed to the truth of
the Catholic religion, has been brought to light in a singular manner
in our own days;[12] and if we except some oversights, very pardonable
under all circumstances, his philosophic sketch of the Catholic system
of theology, is in its masterly brevity one of the boldest and
happiest expositions of that religion, at least for the general
purposes of the world. The other great celebrated philosophical system
of modern times, was based in the principles of the philosophy of
experience--a system which has tended to enlarge almost immeasurably
the field of natural discoveries. As the founder of the philosophy of
experience--Bacon had conceived it, that philosophy, if we except some
particular defects and individual errors, is by no means at variance
with the Christian philosophy of Revelation; for the latter is in
itself a philosophy of experience, though of another, higher, and
spiritual kind. And it is the more necessary to keep this in view, as
otherwise the ordinary abyss of rationalism can scarcely be avoided.
The case is widely different when the principles of the empirical
philosophy, as in Locke and his followers, are directed against
everything exalted, supernatural and spiritual in man and his
consciousness. By this important distinction, Bacon is an European
philosopher, like Leibnitz; but Locke is a mere English philosopher;
as it was in England this Protestant philosophy sprang up and kept
pace with the Protestantism of state, engendered and nurtured by the
Constitution of 1688. However, in England, the Protestant philosophy,
true to its character, kept within the limits of a mitigated
scepticism, and did not plunge into the same wild, revolutionary
excesses as the French philosophy of the eighteenth century, that
started with the same principles.
The high intellectual cultivation of the English is by no means
confined to this negative philosophy, but is of a very peculiar
character, and like the British Constitution, combines in the most
singular manner the most heterogeneous elements. For although the
British Constitution is generally considered as the fashionable model
for our times, and in one respect may indeed be so considered; yet a
powerful aristocracy and many parts of the feudal constitution of the
middle age, are there established in a sort of harmony, or at least
permanent equipoise with the more modern elements of commerce and
democracy. The heroic spirit of chivalry, and the whole moral
character of the middle age were long paramount in England; and hence
in the poetry of no country, if we except the Spanish, is that spirit
so conspicuous. The struggles between the houses of York and Lancaster
during the fifteenth century, which in the rugged and almost savage
sternness of those heroic characters, bear no little resemblance to
the contests of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, form the heroic and
traditionary, though not very remote era of British history--an era
which witnessed, too, the high military glory that England acquired in
the many battles and chivalrous engagements fought on the French soil.
The great national poet of England, who has taken the subject of many
of his dramas from that glorious period of his country's annals,
maintains a sort of sceptical medium--a kind of poetical balance
between the romantic enthusiasm of elder times, and the clear-sighted
penetration of modern; and it is in this peculiar combination of
qualities, that the originality of his genius, his unfathomable depth
and high intellectual charm partly consist. As the Constitution of
England--that is, the balance of her social institutions--sprang out
of the old and mighty struggles which had convulsed that country; we
must not be surprised at finding in her higher poetry, which is only
the image and reflection of life, the same artificial union and
combination of the conflicting elements existing in her political
organization. A profound analysis of art, conducted exclusively with
this view, and towards which the German mind has a strong and perhaps
excessive inclination, would be foreign to my present plan. To point
out the traits of analogy existing between the productions of
intellect, and the ages and nations to which they severally belong,
may serve to throw a clearer and more vivid light on important periods
and momentous epochs of history; and it is with this view I have
indulged now, as formerly, in short parallels of this kind. Down to
the most recent times, this marked predilection for the romantic world
of the middle ages, and the chivalrous days, as well as the bold
genius of poets bursting through all vulgar trammels, have been the
distinctive character of English poetry, and have partly tended to
make it so great a favourite with all the nations of Europe.