The most efficient men in the Church on earth, have had
about one half of their energies paralyzed by contentions with their own
Christian brethren. It is so now. The most energetic men, in pleading
the cause of Christ, are often assailed even more unrelentingly by
brethren who differ with them upon some small point of doctrine, than by
a hostile world.
Human nature, even when partially sanctified, is frail indeed. The
Elector of Saxony was perhaps a good man, but he was a weak one. He was
a zealous Lutheran, and was shocked that a Calvinist, a man who held the
destructive error that the bread and wine only _represented_ the body
and the blood of Christ, should be raised to the throne of Bohemia, and
thus become the leader of the Protestant party. The Elector of Saxony
and the Elector of the Palatine had also been naturally rivals, as
neighbors, and possessors of about equal rank and power. Though the
Calvinists, to conciliate the Lutherans, had offered the throne to the
Elector of Saxony, and he had declined it, as too perilous a post for
him to occupy, still he was weakly jealous of his rival who had assumed
that post, and was thus elevated above him to the kingly dignity.
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