From the Diet of Worms to the Augsburg Confession - James Aitken Wylie

Reformation was developing peacefully in the
Empire; the majority of the Diet was on its side;
the several States and cities were rallying to it;
there was the promise that soon it would be seen
advancing under the aegis of a united Fatherland:
but this fair prospect was suddenly and fatally
blighted by the formation of an Anti-Protestant
League. The unity thus broken has never since
been restored. It must not be overlooked that this
was the doing of the Romanist party.
"What a deplorable event!" exclaims the reader.
And truly it was. It had to be expiated by the wars,
the revolutions, the political and religious strifes of
three centuries. Christendom was entering on the
peaceful and united rectification of the errors of
ages–the removal of those superstitious beliefs
which had poisoned the morals of the world, and
furnished a basis for ecclesiastical and political
despotisms. And, with a purified conscience, there
would have come an enlarged and liberated
intellect, the best patron of letters and art, of liberty
and of industry. With the rise of these two hostile
camps, the world's destinies were fatally changed.
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