Salzburg Country is one of those nooks; an extensive Crypto-Protestantism lodging, under the simple slouch-hats, in the remote valleys there.

Protestantism peaceably kept concealed, hurting nobody; wholesomely forwarding the wooden-clock manufacture, and arable or grazier husbandries, of those poor people.

More harmless sons of Adam, probably, did not breathe the vital air, than those dissentient Salzburgers; generation after generation of them giving offence to no creature.
Successive Archbishops had known of this Crypto-Protestantism, and in remote periods had made occasional slight attempts upon it; but none at all for a long time past.

All attempts that way, as ineffectual for any purpose but stirring up strife, had been discontinued for many generations; [Buchholz, i.

148-151.] and the Crypto-Protestantism was again become a mythical romantic object, ignored by Official persons.
However, in 1727, there came a new Archbishop, one "Firmian", Count Firmian by secular quality, of a strict lean character, zealous rather than wise; who had brought his orthodoxies with him in a rigid and very lean form.
Right Reverend Firmian had not been long in Salzburg till he smelt out the Crypto-Protestantism, and determined to haul it forth from the mythical condition into the practical; and in fact, to see his law-beagles there worry it to death as they ought.