TRIUMPHS AND DEFEAT OF LOUIS XIV.

455 cution, or suffered some external observances of Catholicism to be wrung from them, all having neither energy in work, or security in life; it was really the activity of more than a million of men that France lost, and of the million that produced most." It is a significant fact, in the light of recent events, that many of the refugees were received by the Elector Frederic, and helped to build up Berlin, then a small city of twelve thousand inhabitants.

After the close of the war of the Spanish Succession (1713), at the instigation of Le Tellier, who had succeeded La Chaise as a kind of minister of ecclesiastical affairs, the persecution against the Protestants was renewed, in forms of aggravated and ingenious cruelty.

In his foreign policy, Louis XIV. succeeded brilliantly for a time, but was doomed to terrible disappointment and defeat. He made himself as formidable by his power and ambition as Philip II. had been in the latter part of the preceding century; and like him he was destined to experience a mortifying failure, as well as to lay the foundation of untold calamities for his nation. His attack on the Spanish Netherlands, which were regarded by Holland as a bulwark against his inroads and aggression, led to the triple alliance of Holland, England, and Sweden, in 1668, the object of which was to compel him to conclude a peace with Spain. The same year he concluded with Spain the Peace of Aix la Chapelle. The resentment of Louis against Holland, led him to form, in 1670, the secret treaty with Charles II., in behalf of Catholicism and absolutism. But the unpopularity of the war against Holland among the English, and the necessity under which Charles was placed, of making peace with the Dutch, together with a like course on the part of other allies of Louis, led to the Treaty of Nimeguen in 1678-9, by which he gained a number of towns and fortresses in the Netherlands, besides cer

tain German places.

as before the war.

Holland was left in the same state The continued aggressions of Louis

occasioned the grand alliance of the European powers against him, and the war of ten years, in which William of Orange was the foremost leader among the allies. In the early part of the previous war, when Holland was overrun by the French armies and reduced almost to despair, the Republican magistrates were overthrown and the government placed in the hands of William. By him the courage of the nation had been roused, and, as the only means of defense, they had cut through the dikes and inundated the country. Thenceforward William was the most determined and dangerous antagonist of Louis, and the moving spirit of the coalitions formed against him. In the Peace of Ryswick, in 1697, Louis renounced his support of the Stuarts, and admitted William III. to be the rightful king of Great Britain and Ireland. The war of the Spanish succession, in which Louis sought to supplant the Austrian House in Spain and to combine Spain with France, by placing his grandson, Philip, Duke of Anjou, on the Spanish throne, was closed in 1713, by the Peace of Utrecht. It was provided that France and Spain should never be united under one sovereign; the Spanish Netherlands were transferred to Austria; and the Bourbon Prince was left on the throne of Spain, and his title was acknowledged by the allies, in 1714. The "grand monarch" came out of the wars which had been kindled by his ambition, thwarted and reduced to distress. A significant feature of the Peace of Utrecht was the recognition of the Elector of Brandenburg as king of Prussia. As Sweden sank down from the eminence which it held for a time, as the leading Protestant power in the North, Prussia was rising to take her place.

The reign of Louis XIV. effected the utter paralysis and prostration of the Catholic Reaction. The Popes

PROSTRATION OF PAPAL AUTHORITY.

457

found themselves unable to contend with the temporal power. The disposition of several pontiffs to favor the side of Spain and Austria, sharpened the antagonism between them and the French king, and subjected them to humiliation. When Clement XI. abandoned the antiFrench policy, he was obliged to succumb to the threats of the imperialists. Treaties of peace were concluded between the European nations, in which the interests and even rights of the Popes were involved, but in regard to which they were not consulted. The Church of France remained Catholic; it was even guilty of a revolting persecution; but it united with the monarch in abridging the power and thwarting the designs of the Holy See. Not only was the Catholic world divided into two parties, the Austrian and French, which the Pope could not control, but the Protestant States acquired a preponderance of power; and the Court of Innocent XI. naturally sympathized with the coalition, although its forces were predominantly Protestant, the end of which was to curb the ambition of Louis XIV.

Even the persecuting measures which Louis XIV. adopted ostensibly in behalf of the Catholic religion, were in the highest degree harmful to it; for the hatred of these atrocious proceedings contributed to swell the current of antipathy to the Church and to religion, which was gathering force in the minds of men. The Bull Unigenitus, as it condemned Jansenism and Augustinian doctrine, brought the Jesuits into alliance with the Papal See. But this Bull, with the cognate measures, divided the clergy and excited all the elements of opposition to the Papal supremacy over the Gallican Church. The Jansenists became virtual auxiliaries of the rising party, in whom the spirit of innovation had full sway.

Louis XIV. died in 1715.

1 Ranke, iii.

Voltaire was then about

twenty-one years old. The age of philosophy and illuminism, of religious and political revolutions, was approaching. The third estate, the middle class, was preparing to grasp the power which had been wrested from the nobles and concentrated in the throne. Freethinking, transplanted from England, was taking root and spreading through all orders of French society, thence to be diffused over Europe. The fabric of political and religious despotism which Louis XIV. had erected, was to go down before the end of the century, in a revolutionary tempest.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE PROTESTANT THEOLOGY.

PROTESTANTISM, under whatever diversities of form it appeared, and notwithstanding the varieties of character and of opinion which are observed among its leaders, is distinguished as a system of belief by two principles. These are justification by faith alone, and the exclusive authority of the Scriptures.1

The subject round which the Protestant discussions revolved, and out of which they originally sprang, is the reconciliation of man to God. The controversy with the Roman Catholics did not relate to the branches of theology on which the ancient councils had spoken. The Apostolic symbol, the creeds of Nicea and Chalcedon,

1 Among the books of reference respecting the Protestant and the Catholic Theology, are the Collections of Creeds; the Lutheran (edited by Hase, 1846); The Reformed (by Niemeyer, 1840); The Roman Catholic (by Streitwolf u. Klener, 1846). Calvin's Institutes and Melancthon's Loci Communes are the principal doctrinal treatises on the Protestant side, in the age of the Reformation. Bellarmine is still the ablest controversialist on the Catholic side since the Tridentine Council; Disputationes de Controversiis Christiana Fidei adv. hujus Temporis hæreticos (Rome, 1581, 1582, 1593). The ablest antagonists of Bellarmine were Martin Chemnitz, Examen Concil. Trid. (1565–73), and the Huguenot theologian, Chamier, Panstratia Catholicæ, etc. (Geneva, 1626; Frankfort, 1629). A convenient manual of Catholic Theology is Perrone, Prælectiones Theologica (2 vols., 1847). Among the modern works on Protestant Theology are Planck, Gsch. d. prot. Lehrbegriffs (1781-1800); Gass, Gsch. d. prot. Dogmatik (1862); A. Schweizer, Die prot. Central-dogmen innerhalb d. ref. Kirche (1854); Heppe, Dogmatik d. deutsch Prot. (1857); Dorner, Gsch. d. prot. Theol. (1867); Schenkel, Das Wesen d. Prot. (1846). See also Werner, Gsch. d. kath. Theol. seit d. Trid. Conc. (1866). To these are to be added numerous modern works on Symbolics and on the History of Doctrine; by Neander, Klee (Roman Cath.), Baumgarten-Crusius, Hagenbach, Baur, Möhler (Rom. Cath.), Nitzsch, Winer, Shedd, etc.