Protestantism in Poland and Bohemia - James Aitken Wylie

he feared to take the only effectual steps that could
lead to that end. He was surrounded constantly
with Protestants, who cherished the hope that he
would yet abandon Rome, and declare himself
openly in favour of Protestantism, but he always
drew back when the moment came for deciding.
We have seen him, in conjunction with the Diet of
1552, pluck the sword of persecution from the
hands of the bishops; and he was willing to go still
further, and make trial of any means that promised
to amend the administration and reform the
doctrines of the Roman Church. He was
exceedingly favorable to a project much talked of
in his reign -- namely, that of convoking a National
Synod for reforming the Church on the basis of
Holy Scripture.
The necessity of such an assembly had been
mooted in the Diet of 1552; it was revived in the
Diet of 1555, and more earnestly pressed on the
king, and thus contemporaneously with the
abdication of the imperial sovereignty by Charles
V., and the yet unfinished sittings of the great
Council of Trent, the probability was that
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