A modern historian has observed that "the affairs of religion were the grand fomenters and promoters of the _Thirty Years' War_, which first brought down the powers of the North to mix in the politics of the Southern states." The fact is indisputable, but the cause is not so apparent. Gustavus Adolphus, the vast military genius of his age, had designed, and was successfully attempting, to oppose the overgrown power of the imperial house of Austria, which had long aimed at an universal monarchy in Europe; a circumstance which Philip IV. weakly hinted at to the world when he placed this motto under his arms--"_Sine ipso factum est nihil_;" an expression applied to Jesus Christ by St. John! FOOTNOTES: [158] "Fox's Martyrs," as the book was popularly called, was often chained to a reading-desk in churches; one is still thus affixed at Cirencester; it thus received equal honour with the Bible. [159] Llorente's "Critical History of the Inquisition." [160] Naude, "Considerations Politiques," p. 115. See a curious note in Hart's "Life of Gustavus Adolphus," ii. 129. TOLERATION. An enlightened toleration is a blessing of the last age--it would seem to have been practised by the Romans, when they did not mistake the primitive Christians for seditious members of society; and was inculcated even by Mahomet, in a passage in the Koran, but scarcely practised by his followers. In modern history it was condemned when religion was turned into a political contest under the aspiring house of Austria--and in Spain--and in France. It required a long time before its nature was comprehended--and to this moment it is far from being clear, either to the tolerators or the tolerated. It does not appear that the precepts or the practice of Jesus and the apostles inculcate the _compelling_ of any to be Christians;[161] yet an expression employed in the nuptial parable of the great supper, when the hospitable lord commanded the servant, finding that he had still room to accommodate more guests, to go out in the highways and hedges, and "_compel them to come in, that my house may be filled_," was alleged as an authority by those catholics who called themselves "the converters," for using religious force, which, still alluding to the hospitable lord, they called "a charitable and salutary violence." It was this circumstance which produced Bayle's "Commentaire Philosophique sur ces Paroles de Jesus Christ," published under the supposititious name of an _Englishman_, as printed at Canterbury in 1686, but really at Amsterdam. It is curious that Locke published his first letter on "Toleration" in Latin at Gouda, in 1689--the second in 1690--and the third in 1692. Bayle opened the mind of Locke, and some time after quotes Locke's Latin letter with high commendation.[162] The caution of both writers in publishing in foreign places, however, indicates the prudence which it was deemed necessary to observe in writing in favour of toleration.