HISTORIC SKETCHES. 



clitiou expressed or understood, and so requires a dependent 



mood. 



lu the exorcise mrx>\A is the third person singular of the 

 imperfect indicative ; tho rj between *v (*i) and the verb is the 

 ;il augment formed by lengthening the a, tho first letter 

 in the verb ayycMw. In I<TX"W and JKTI>W the augment is 

 formal \>y .simplj lengthening the . The optative form in 

 ir(oi<A.<u.Tai)> is ocoaaionod by l>n in a sentenoe in what is 

 called tho .././i./ita oratio, that is, a dependent sentence. A 

 direct independent sentence is called oralio recta. In other 

 -.In- optative is required because the fact is represented 

 as dependent on the report of the messenger ; in English the 

 indicative must be used. The force of tho aorist in the im- 

 perative irtffrfvffaru cannot be given in English by any one 

 word. The student must wait for tho explanations to be giver 

 in tho Syntax. 



EXERCISE 83. ENGLISH-GREEK. 



1. The general will freo the city from the enemy (plural). 

 2. Good men plant for their offspring also. 3. Good men will 

 plant for their children (vats). 4. The messengers report many 

 things. 5. The enemy plot against the king. 6. The enemy 

 will plot against me. 7. I announce many things to the citi- 

 zens. 8. Achilles is angry with Agamemnon. 9. Achilles will 

 be angry with Agamemnon. 10. Thou art angry with thy 

 brother. 11. I was angry (first aorist) with the enemy. 12. 

 I will entreat my judges. 13. Socrates will not entreat his 

 judges. 14. The good citizens will not entreat their judges. 

 15. The enemy are destroying Plataea. 16. The soldiers will 

 destroy Plataea. 17. The soldiers destroyed the city. 18. Hear 

 (aorist) me, O my offspring (plural). 19. One friend believes 

 another (traipos iratpif). 20. One friend will believe another. 

 21. One friend did believe another. 22. They believed. 23. 

 They did believe. 24. They believe. 25. They will believe. 

 26. Thou wilt believe. 27. They two believed. 28. We shall 

 believe. 29. Wo believe. 30. The soldier prevails much by 

 his valour. 31. I prevailed much by my valour. 





HISTORIC SKETCHES. XUII. 



THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 



THIRTY years of war ! Thirty years of battle, murder, and sud- 

 den death ; thirty years of anarchy and bad-blood-making ; thirty 

 years in which two strenuously opposed hosts did their utmost to 

 mar so much of God's image in one another as thirty such 

 years had left remaining in them. Why all this bloodshed r 

 The conquerors and the conquered called themselves Christians, 

 professed to be guided by the teaching of Him who bade hia 

 follower put up his sword into its sheath, and ordered the smit- 

 ten on one oheek to turn the other cheek also to the smiter. It is 

 true that he said so, true also that he warned his followers 

 that he was come not to bring peace upon the earth but a 

 sword that is to say, that though he himself taught his dis- 

 ciples, by his own precept and example, not to resist evil, he 

 knew that what he taught would so divide men as for a time, 

 and even, perhaps, at recurring times, to put the sword of strife 

 between them. The parents were to bo divided against their 

 children, the wife against her husband ; and a man's foes were 

 to be they of his own household. 



This state of things had been seen in Christendom on more 

 than one occasion, but not accompanied by any great convul- 

 sion. It had been rather local than general, showing itself in 

 the form of heresies with their attendant persecutions, rather 

 than in any universal outbreak. .In early days the circum- 

 stances of the Christian Church were such, that union amongst 

 its members was indispensable to its existence, surrounded as 

 it was on all sides with implacable foes, and overlooked from its 

 midst by an irresistible pagan master, who looked con- 

 temptuously on its practices, and derided its principles as 

 unmanly. When, in the course of time, the Christian Gospel 

 made its splendid but bloodless victories, and the master who, 

 erewhile oppressed, became its champion and supporter, while 

 all the nations of Europe heard its message gladly, the Church 

 was too much occupied in consolidating its power, the people 

 were too ignorant in tho newness of their conversion, for any 

 serious disturbances to take place. Occasionally, indeed, as 

 time grew older, and corruptions which had crept in began to 



be seen and spoken about, them was agitation and trouble, a* 

 when John Hums raised his voice in Bohemia against npiritaal 

 wrongdoing, and having brought down the wrath of ignorant 

 rulers upon him, perished a witness for truth ; as whan John 

 Wycliffo, in our own country, undertook to withstand the tra- 

 ditions of the elders, where those conflicted with the revela- 

 tions written for man's instruction in God's Bible; as wheu 

 Savonarola, in 1497, preached to the people of Florence, and 

 was, for their sins or his own, put to death in the market-place. 



But it waa not till the year 1517, when Martin Lather trod 

 under foot and burned the Pope's Bull of Indulgence* at Wit- 

 tenberg, that Christendom saw the fulfilment, on a huge seal*, 

 of the words which the Redeemer had addressed to his 

 apostles. In the flame that burned the Papal Bull to aches 

 was kindled the scorching fire of a no-called religions war, which 

 raged furiously for tho space of thirty years, involved nearly 

 every European nation in its toils, and at its finish left Europe 

 purified, though exhausted ; purged from many sins and many 

 follies which perhaps actually required so great a remedy for 

 their removal. 



The Thirty Tears' War was in effect the war between Roman 

 Catholicism and Protestaitism, between the old order which 

 was changing, and the now which forced change upon it. It 

 sprang from a number of causes, but the immHiatft outburst 

 was on this wise. 



Since the Reformation till the year 1612, the German Pro- 

 testants hod enjoyed the free exercise of their religion. Their 

 numbers and the importance of their leaders, including as they 

 did some of the more powerful among the lesser princes, had 

 won this for them, and they lived peaceably enough with their 

 Roman Catholic countrymen. The rights of the Protestants 

 were under the protection of the emperor, as head of the empire. 

 All went smoothly enough, in spite of the efforts of the men of 

 the older Church, till the advent of Rudolph IL to the throne. 

 He neglected many of his duties for pleasures harmless enough 

 in themselves, such as clock-making, chemistry, and nwnhanms, 

 but not only useless but pernicious in a king. Whatever 

 statesmanship he had in him led him to join the princes of the 

 empire in a league against the Turks, who were at that time 

 threatening seriously the western nations of Europe. The 

 Jesuits, who abounded at bis court, managed to work the 

 emperor's organisation to their own ends, and the Protestants 

 getting wind of this, banded themselves together into what they 

 called " The Evangelical Union," at the head of which they 

 placed the Elector Palatine of the Rhine, son-in-law to James I. 

 of England. When Rudolph died, in 1612, the election fell, to 

 the great horror of the Protestants, upon Matthias, the ap- 

 proved pupil and close ally of the Jesuits and extremists in 

 the Roman Church. 



Matthias wilfully failed to protect his Protestant subjects in 

 the enjoyment of their simple right to worship God according to 

 tho dictates of their own consciences ; the Romanists understood 

 that a nod was as good as a wink from an emperor whose eyes 

 were intentionally fast shut, and the result waa that the 

 Protestants of Germany were evil intreated in many places. 

 Churches in which the Protestants worshipped were pulled down, 

 and a large amount of social persecution went on, though, as 

 yet, the law professed to protect equally all who were under it. 

 Then the League arose, a combination of Roman Catholic princes 

 throughout Europe, not in Germany only, of which the avowed 

 object was to root out the hated Protestant faith wherever it 

 might be. The League had the special blessing of the Pope, 

 and included among its members many of the most powerful 

 persons in Christendom, lay princes as well as ecclesiastical dig- 

 nitaries; it was rich in wealth and influence, and in bitter 

 hatred for all who were opposed to it 



When the Bohemian nobles complained to the Imperial Coun- 

 cil at Prague that their churches had been pulled down, and 

 their rites and those who administered them had been in- 

 sulted, their complaints were received with so much contempt 

 and so little consideration, that the heady Bohemians treated 

 the matter as a personal affront to themselves, hot words fol- 

 lowed, and some of tho contemptuous councillors got thrown 

 out of window for their pains. To make the situation more 

 difficult, Matthias procured that his cousin Ferdinand, a bigot 

 of bigots on the Roman side, should be King of Bohemia, 

 and his acts and government speedily drove his subjects into 

 revolt. Anarchy was prevailing, civil war was going on in 



