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256 POLITICAL CONSEQUENCESempire found it to acquire friends in a state so composed,and to make war upon Germans by the assistance of Germans. The internal union of this body of states was, therefore, nothing but a slow and lingering disease ; which, whileit maintained a show of health in its subject, was on that account preparingit the more surely, either for total dissolution, or for subjectionit matters not whether to its own superior, or to a foreignerbut in both cases for its destruction.It was only by a Spirit of Disunion that it could befairly roused into life and this the Reformation; producedby giving separate and peculiar interests to the Protestantand Catholic parties.It cannot be denied that it was impossible accurately to foretell what the consequences of thesedivisions might be. The interference of foreign powers inthe contest appeared, as in fact itwas, inevitable; a concurrence of fortunate circumstances, however, averted theconsequences which were thus threatened, and that oftenmore successfully than could have been expected. Moreover, if the separate interests of the two parties had been ofsuch a nature as to render it impossible that they should become subservient to the interests of the empire, or, stillworse, if they had been opposed to it,a total dismemberment might have been the result. Luckily, however, thiswas not the case ;neither interest contained in itself anything contrary to the rights of tlie head of the empire, or ofthe individual states :they centred upon the subject of religion and the rights connected with it ; and, after abundance of feud and warfare; it was sufficiently ascertained byexperience, that the establishment of the Corpus Evangelicoremwhich did not receive its definite form tilllong afterthe thing itself had existed (1653) tended to no irremediable division between the diet and the empire. On the contrary, the mutual watch which the two parties kept uponeach other, and the constant attentiveness which they showed,often with good reason, sometimes in a degree almost ridiculous, to the slightest advances of their antagonists, affordeda warrant for the maintenance of the German Constitution,at least in its principal parts, which could certainly not havebeen furnished in any other way. From this more elevatedpoint of view, all those dissensions, debates, and wars, whichthe Reformation produced in the interior of this body, ap-