History of Protestantism in the Netherlands - James Aitken Wylie

Orange, as it formerly summoned them to the
standard of Frederick of Saxony? But since Luther
was laid in the grave the great heart of Germany
had waxed cold. Many of its princes seemed to be
Protestant for no other end but to be able to
increase their revenues by appropriations from the
lands and hoards of the Roman establishment, and
it was hardly to be, expected that Protestants of this
stamp would feel any lively interest in the great
struggle in Holland. But the chief cause of the
coldness of Germany was the unhappy jealousy
that divided the Lutherans from the Reformed.
That difference had been widening since the evil
day of Marburg. Luther on that occasion had been
barely able to receive Zwingle and his associates as
brethren, and many of the smaller men who
succeeded Luther lacked even that small measure
of charity; and in the times of William of Orange to
be a Calvinist was, in the eyes of many Lutherans,
to be a heretic. When the death of Edward VI.
compelled the celebrated John Alasco, with his
congregation, to leave England and seek asylum in
Denmark, West-phalus, a Lutheran divine, styled
the wandering congregation of Alasco "the martyrs
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