It is true only in this, that both in Germany and England a Protestantism softer and less abstract than Calvinism was found useful to the compromises of courtiers and aristocrats; for every abstract creed does something for human equality.

Lutheranism in Germany rapidly became what it is to-day--a religion of court chaplains.

The reformed church in England became something better; it became a profession for the younger sons of squires.

But these parallel tendencies, in all their strength and weakness, reached, as it were, symbolic culmination when the mediaeval monarchy was extinguished, and the English squires gave to what was little more than a German squire the damaged and diminished crown.
It must be remembered that the Germanics were at that time used as a sort of breeding-ground for princes.

There is a strange process in history by which things that decay turn into the very opposite of themselves.