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;. GUSTAVUS TROLLE AND CHRISTIAN II. 181
a punishment of heresy, that heresy being opposition to
Rome. It made the Swedes determined never to have
again such a powerful archbishop as Trolle, and, as two of
the bishops had been his supporters, the whole order were
objects of suspicion. The breach was now made, and it
was seen that the power of the bishops must be checked,
and their wealth and independence diminished.
It made it easily possible for Gustaf Vasa to attack this
point in the Swedish constitution under the financial
necessities, which, from the first, pressed upon him.
When also the pope stiffly refused to confirm canonically
elected bishops because their fees were not forthcoming the
breach became still wider. It was then that the new doc
trines began to take hold of men s hearts, and the national
sentiment was strengthened and ennobled by the teaching
as to the value of individual faith in God which the
Lutheran preachers gave. The new spirit of personal
piety which was engendered, the new force of character
which was created, were precious alike to the religion and
to the policy of Sweden. The Church had brought Sweden
into the comity of nations, but had failed to make the best
of the national character. The State was now to take the
moulding of this character in hand, in alliance with the
Church, but in an alliance which (as we shall see) did not
give the Church sufficient freedom of development. On
the whole, however, the tangled web of destiny can be
seen by those who look back upon its progress to be surely
woven by the fingers of God, and not to be the working of
a blind and meaningless fate. Good lives were woven into
it, and their influence is not yet exhausted.
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