For several years before the death of Luther, appearances were unfavorable to the peace and religious liberty of the Protestants. This led them, not so much to prayer and confidence in God as their shield and protector, but to strengthen the league of Smalcald, and prepare for war. They were now a thoroughly political body. This was the outward character of Protestantism at that early period. The man who loved peace was in his grave, and his counsels were forgotten by his followers. He could not conceive a greater calamity befalling the cause of truth than that the sword should be drawn in its defense. Better far be martyrs, he thought, than warriors.
The jealous Emperor narrowly watched the increasing power of the league, and pronounced it "an empire within an empire." But his fatal expedition to Algiers, his renewed war with Francis, and the successes of the Turks in Hungary, led him to temporize, to conceal his feelings and intentions. He held several diets of the empire for the avowed purpose of settling their religious differences, and restoring peace and harmony, but with no good results. The Protestants were deceived and thrown off their guard by fair pretenses and apparent concessions. In the Diet of Spires, in 1542, the pontiff, Paul III., by his legate, renewed his promise of a council. He signified that it should be held at Trent, a city in the Tyrol, subject to the king of the Romans, and situated on the confines between Germany and Italy. Ferdinand and the whole Catholic party expressed their immediate satisfaction, and accepted the proposal. Not so the Protestants. They rejected both the place and the council proposed by the pontiff; demanding a general, or OEcumenical, Council. They protested that they would pay no regard to a council held beyond the precincts of the empire, called by the pope's authority, and over which he assumed the right of presiding. Regardless, however, of their protestations, and fortified by the general consent of his own party, he published a bull for the convocation of the council at Trent before the 1st of November, and named three cardinals to preside as his legates.
At the appointed time, the pope's legates, the imperial ambassadors, and a few prelates appeared. But as a fierce war was then raging between the Emperor and Francis, few ecclesiastics could travel with safety. It was manifest from these circumstances, that nothing satisfactory could be undertaken; and to avoid the ridicule and contempt of his enemies, the pope adjourned for an indefinite time, the reopening of the council. Unhappily for the dignity and authority of the papal See at this very time, the Emperor and his brother Ferdinand, king of the Romans, found it necessary, not only to connive at the conduct of the Protestants, but to court their favor by repeated acts of indulgence. Ferdinand, who depended on their assistance for the defense of Hungary against the infidels, not only permitted their protestation to be inserted in the records of the diet, but renewed in their favor all the Emperor's concessions at Ratisbon, adding to them whatever they demanded for their further security. Thus had the Reformers rest, and the evangelical principles time to deepen and spread, though not from the good will, but from the disturbed state of their adversaries' affairs.
As late as 1544, at the diet held in the same place, the politic Charles, perceiving that the time was not yet come to offend the jealous spirit of the Protestants, or to provoke the powers of the Smalcald Confederacy, contrived to soothe the Germans by new concessions, and a more ample extension of their religious privileges. Being still engaged in foreign wars, and his hands not free, he employed all his powers of dissimulation to court and flatter the Elector and the Land-grave, the heads of the Protestant party, and through them to deceive the members of the confederacy.
Meanwhile his papal majesty was becoming day by day more jealous of these negotiations and concessions. He was longing as ardently as his three predecessors had done, for the rooting out, by force of arms, of this wide-spreading, giant heresy. It had been the constant object of the Vatican, from the beginning of the Reformation, to create a hostile breach between the Emperor and the Protestants, and a consequent appeal to arms. But, so far as we can judge, the consummation of these wicked designs was prevented for nearly thirty years, in the providence of God, and chiefly in answer to the prayers of one man. But he was now off the scene, and his brethren were trusting to their military organization and numerical strength. Besides, the determined position which they had taken with reference to the proposed council, gave the pope and the Emperor every opportunity to ensnare them; and so it turned out, as we shall soon see.
The avowed object of this famous council was, of course, the pacification of the church, the healing of her diseases, the restoring of her unity, and the blessing of her children; but its real object was the condemnation of the doctrines of the
Reformers, Luther, Zwingle, and Calvin, and the immediate persecution of all who should oppose its decrees. This was the secret arrangement between the pontiff and the Emperor, for they were well aware that the Protestants would never subject themselves to the council, or yield obedience to its canons.