popular schools of morality, constitute the spirit and essence of a religion? This is no where so fully understood, and so deeply felt, as in Protestant Germany at the present day--Germany, where lies the root of Protestantism, its mighty centre, its all-ruling spirit, its vital power, and its life-blood--Germany, where to supply the want of the true spirit of religion, a remedy is sought sometimes in the external forms of liturgy,[8] sometimes in the pompous apparatus of Biblical philology and research, destitute of the true key of interpretation[9]; sometimes in the empty philosophy of Rationalism, and sometimes in the mazes of a mere interior Pietism. Undoubtedly even within the pale of Catholicism, we meet occasionally with individuals who adopt the same, or at least very similar systems, who either give in to the principle of Rationalism, or to a false theological illuminism (as in the recent period of Neology), or like some of the Jansenists, indulge in the unsafe and illusive suggestions of a sentimental mysticism. For the contests of two hostile parties will not always prevent the imitation of defects, and the contagion of errors; and this is only an additional reason, why in a work of this kind, we should abstain from entering more closely and minutely into the nature of these controversies. In contemplating the first steps of this great Revolution; in considering the circumstances of that period, we experience a feeling of regret, that the great problem of that age, the arduous task which devolved on it, of accomplishing an universal regeneration and real Reformation of the world, should have remained unexecuted, from the very revolutionary turn which affairs took--nay, that this task should not even have been understood or felt by any of the leading characters of the time. The earlier disputes between the spiritual and temporal powers had related to the dominion over certain territories, or over Ecclesiastical property in general, and especially to the jurisdiction of the state over the latter species of property. The allurements which the confiscation of church property held out to cupidity, must be ranked among the main causes which contributed to the diffusion of Protestantism. Thus, for instance, Prussia, the country of the Teutonic order, was now converted into a secular dutchy; and in the interior of Germany, a celebrated knight,[10] led away by the spirit of that age of feud, invaded one of the Ecclesiastical electorates, thinking no doubt, that that state, like every other Ecclesiastical domain, was the lawful booty of the first comer. But independently of these partial changes and minor transactions, (and in many Protestant countries, such as England and Sweden, church property remained inviolate, and even Episcopacy was retained,) the hostility of the German Reformers to the church was of a different and more spiritual nature; and it was the religious dignity of the priesthood which was more especially the