contest, this long protracted struggle has tended to excite the emulation of both parties in the pursuits of learning, and the labours of science, to stir up a mutual vigilance in the moral conduct of individuals, as well as in the administration of states, and thus to keep both parties in a state of salutary watchfulness and activity. Even from the collision of these two conflicting elements, there has sprung up in some countries a new and third element, which though not such as could be desired, nor entirely conformable to Christianity, has still been productive of important and remarkable consequences. Of the eight or nine countries, in which Protestantism has obtained a firm footing, and acquired a permanent existence, there are three in particular, where it has been attended with mighty historical effects, and where the originally destructive conflict of hostile elements has given birth to three new and momentous phenomena in the history of mankind. These are, in Germany the religious pacification, which forms the basis of her future prosperity, stamps the peculiar character of the German nation, and designates its future moral destiny: in England, the highly valued, or as it is there called, the glorious Constitution of 1688, whose mere outward form, or dead letter, has been an object of desire to so many other nations:--lastly in France, the Revolution in philosophy, produced by the indirect influence of Protestantism, and the combination of so many Protestant, or semi-protestant elements, and which gave birth to a frightful political Revolution, which after a short intervenient period of military despotism, has been succeeded in its turn by a mighty epoch of moral and social regeneration--a regeneration which indeed has not yet been consummated, which is still in a state of precarious and convulsive labour, but is even on that account the more entitled to the historian's attention.