The monastic orders had been leniently treated; the compact expressing only that monks who held prebends should not beg, and that the begging monks should make their collections only at stated times. But the monks and the nuns did more than comply with these rules; large numbers of them deserted the cloisters and engaged in the occupations and duties of social life.
Gustavus was victor, and we must add that the victory was even too complete. The organization and direction of the new ecclesiastical order were entrusted to the king, as was indeed the case in all the countries in which the State was not opposed to the Reformation. We must, however, further remark that he mitigated the evil by acting only according to the advice of Anderson, Olaf, and other reformers. Having thus struck the heavy blow which disarmed the Romish hierarchy, the king left Westeraas, and henceforth openly professed the evangelical faith.[456]
Thus fell Roman Catholicism in Sweden. The principal cause of its fall was the profession and preaching of the truth by Olaf and his brother and their friends. Having fought well they received the recompense of their labors. We will not, however, withhold our respect from the moral resolution with which Brask and others contended for what they believed to be the truth. Personal interests and the interest of caste had undoubtedly a good deal to do with it; but we must not forget that an order of things which had the sanction of so many ages was, according to their convictions, the true order. In the minds of men there exist opposing tendencies. In the view of one class the institutions of the past are legitimate and sacred, and they cling to them with all the passion and pertinacity of which their natures are capable; while in the view of another class the future, and the future alone, presents itself under a beneficent aspect. Into the future they project their ideal; they invest it with all the loveliness created by their own imagination, and they hurry enthusiastically towards that future. This is right. Nevertheless, prudent men endeavor to develop in the present time the true and wholesome principles of the past, and to form by the influence of the life which proceeds from the Gospel a new world, in which those precious germs shall spring up which are to be the wealth of the future.[457]