TO FERDINAND II, AUGUST EMPEROR, MOST POWERFUL, MOST INVINCIBLE, KING OF GERMANY, HUNGARY, BOHEMIA, DALMATIA, CROATIA, SLAVONIA, ETC.; ARCHDUKE OF AUSTRIA; DUKE OF BURGUNDY, STYRIA, CARINTHIA, CARNIOLA, AND WÜRTTEMBERG, ETC.; COUNT OF TYROL, ETC. ADAM CONTZEN OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS.
Of human works, August Emperor, the greatest and most necessary is government; for the human race cannot subsist without an order of commanding and obeying. Secondly, the prince is the most eminent image of GOD: by a certain intermediate majesty between God and men, he represents the immense majesty of the Divine Being. For this reason he is even called a god, because through the vicegerency of God he is exalted and sacrosanct. The force and dignity of princely government, however, must not be estimated by the display of wealth, the splendor of honors, the breadth of empire, or a retinue of attendants, but by the most profound providence of the wisdom of God and by the immutable decree by which He determined to govern this universe.
Indeed, no one can comprehend by thought and understanding how it happens that so many hundreds of thousands of men—among whom there are few good men, while many are estranged, proud, defiant, and obstinate—are obedient to the command of one man. Why do fortified cities, warlike nations, and the most extensive kingdoms not merely obey one man—even if he is sometimes wise and just, yet often either infirm through age or depraved in morals, and by the condition of nature liable to errors—but also expend, at the command of the ruler, their wealth, which avarice holds with the greatest tenacity,
and life itself, which all are eager to retain? So steadfast a judgment concerning the common good by no means arises from the disposition congenitally and individually implanted in each person. For if we consult this disposition, we shall find each man so attached to himself that he places his own advantages and his own preservation before all things. Therefore, in addition to the appetites necessary for his own safety, the Supreme Divine Being has implanted in the mind of every man a will directed toward the common good and toward preserving human society. In all the best men this will is so firm that they consider obedience more important than life. We discern the efficacy of this principle even in the mute elements, and experience it much more clearly in the members of a single body. For, lest the association and communication of worldly things be abolished when their bond has been dissolved and their mutual influence obstructed, and lest this most artfully constructed machine fail anywhere through a gap and a void, all things come to the rescue contrary to their own natural character and inclination: light things tend downward, heavy things upward, while individual members suffer themselves to be burned and cut for the safety of the head. Since, moreover, we see the agreement of all nations, even barbarous ones, and of all ages in honoring and protecting kings, we readily understand that so great a concurrence arises not from opinion, training, and instruction, but from divine ordination.
That consideration of the commonwealth offers us two lessons, which are the solid and necessary foundations of public peace and human society. The prince will rest upon one, and the subject upon the other. The prince understands that he is the bond of so many men and things, and that he possesses over everyone the power which a head possesses over the members. He understands that his safety and honor consist in the health, vigor, and strength of all the members. Just as it has never been heard said that the head hates some one member or oppresses it more than the others, so a prudent and good prince will never allow himself, as a respecter of persons, to permit some of his subjects to be oppressed and harassed by others. Rather, through the golden equality of justice he will render each person, according to his station, unharmed and secure.
The other lesson is prescribed to private persons: let each remember that he is not merely a man, but a member within the great body of the commonwealth and of human society, and that he is such not by laws proposed and enacted by man, but by the divine ordinance which cries into the ears of all: “Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. For there is no power except from God; and those that exist have been ordained by God. Therefore, he who resists the power resists the ordinance of God. But those who resist acquire condemnation for themselves.”
It is a monstrosity if a member rebels against the head. Just as the involuntary movements of the frenzied and the epileptic strike horror into everyone, so in a commonwealth whatever is undertaken against the will of the prince carries danger together with deformity and is the work of a diseased part. Therefore, if anyone contrives to dissolve civil order and its bond by stirring up discord, secession, sedition, or civil war, he acts just as if he were to excite a tumult between the head and the members. He is no less insane than if he were to labor to interchange the positions and stations of the elements and to produce certain voids or intermundane spaces, so that they could not operate by mutual contact and influence. For the order of rulers and subjects in a commonwealth has been strengthened by the decree of the eternal Lawgiver just as firmly as the structure of the elemental world, which always coheres with itself and is nowhere interrupted. The omnipotent hand of the Creator could certainly have made the world in such a way that its individual parts would subsist in isolation, without the conjunction and fellowship of the others, and that within it every man would be sufficient unto himself. But it seemed good otherwise: He willed nothing to be solitary, nothing not to require others; He willed some things to depend upon other things, and all things upon Himself.
This most holy and supremely authentic constitution of the Supreme Divine Being, Most Invincible Emperor, compelled me, while teaching Sacred Letters in the Academy of Mainz, to break silence and write about the whole commonwealth. For after the first articles of faith, ignorance of which no excuse exonerates, it must be impressed upon all souls most forcefully and most frequently that every soul is subject to the higher powers. The present condition of Europe is also such that in no age and in no place has a solid and continual treatment of this doctrine been, or is, more necessary. Unless that doctrine prevails, the disturbances and confusions of political affairs will render the ordering even of other matters almost useless, since peace and concord are supremely consonant with Christian piety.
I am not unaware that the commonwealths of every nation have frequently been agitated by complaints, secessions, seditions, rebellions, and civil wars. For the causes of disturbances have always been avarice, ambition, lusts, and a most unhappy restlessness of the human race,
while neither magistrates observe a limit in the exercise of authority nor citizens a limit in liberty; while excessive domination is sought on the one side and excessive license on the other. But this is an evil of every age. I complain of the singular unhappiness of our own age, and particularly of our Europe. For I deny that in any age or place there has been so great an obstinacy against obedience or so great a desire for license and anarchy as that which today disturbs and dashes together the nations of Europe. There were formerly more numerous and more savage seditions; but their causes, although neither just nor lawful, were nevertheless weighty and great, and made those seditions more excusable. For the commands of magistrates were generally harsh, avaricious, insulting, unjust, and cruel, and by them even a moderate people was provoked and inflamed to rebellion. The rebellions stirred up in our age have neither excuse nor pretext.
For the kingdoms of Europe are administered by the most moderate laws. By the oath of every prince, not merely is license restricted, so that a prince cannot do evil, but the liberty of many is also restrained, so that a prince cannot do that for which he was created. Hence all governments are mild and many are exceedingly mild. Yet amid so great a gentleness, equality, and servitude of rulers, the gravest rebellions are stirred up by the freest peoples and by nobles who are almost the masters of their own kings—not through any necessity or advantage, but solely through the intemperance of a liberty made wanton by excessive prosperity—with the ruin of nations and the danger of barbarous servitude, set before their eyes for their destruction. Free cities and magnates, injured by nothing, not even by a word, join in making the disturbances harsher and increasing their strength. They exhaust their citizens, plunder their treasuries, and assist the rebels with resources and counsel, solely from an inability to endure authority and peace. Europe’s misery teaches this through many examples; I shall be content with the most recent, which Your Majesty is experiencing.
In the whole world there are no subjects freer than those who rejected and attacked your August House, Most Powerful Emperor, its gentle scepter, and the waters of Siloah that flow in silence. Let them publish the causes of such great evils, which first recoiled upon them. It was not a bitter exaction of tributes, not shameful lusts, not cruelty, nor any other evil, but suspicions invented and spread among the common people. From these there immediately followed the barbarous slaughter of magistrates, their cause unheard and their defense denied. Some put forward religion as a pretext for their crime; but no violence had been inflicted upon anyone’s conscience, and no nation in Europe possessed greater religious liberty.
Indeed, they themselves sufficiently demonstrated that they had by no means stirred up such great disturbances for the sake of religion. For in those provinces there were Catholics, defenders of the Augsburg Confession, Calvinists, Anabaptists, Arians, atheists, or Epicureans; nevertheless, they elected a Calvinist antiking, who at once, at the beginning, terrified everyone so greatly through iconoclasm that most of those who were not Calvinists despaired of the liberty of their own religion. And now many of their own accord sought to obtain the favor of others through a change and transfer of religion.
It is therefore established that at this time the minds of men are inclined to reject lawful governments, especially the minds of those who, although they desire to be exempt from royal jurisdiction, nevertheless treat their own subjects as chattels. With as much obstinacy as they resist their superiors, they dominate their inferiors just as unrestrainedly. Not a few of them, killed by their own farmers, have paid excessively heavy penalties for the crime of both offenses.
I find two springs and, as it were, sources of so great and dangerous an evil, which, unless it is checked, will someday issue in great disgraces: seditious doctrine and examples. Each evil has grown strong. Pseudo-theologians, under the false appearance of religion, and pseudo-politicians, under the pretext of the public good, go about overthrowing the commonwealth and attacking kings. Each group is assisted by the example of those whose rebellion is judged to have succeeded well.
The doctrine of the pseudo-theologians is the destruction and plague of the commonwealth and of peace. For many, after disturbing ecclesiastical monarchy, expelling archbishops and bishops, and instituting annual or monthly presidents, attempt to introduce the same democracy—or, as they themselves call it, parity—into the commonwealth, so that they themselves may rule in their kingdom like tribunes of the plebs. They are called Puritans, a race of men spread through every corner of Europe to the great destruction of nations. Concerning them there survives a brilliant testimony of the Most Serene King of Britain. Writing a testament for his son in his second book, he pronounces as follows:
“Here in Scotland certain men from the ministry—headlong, fiery, and bold—became so popular with the common people amid this confusion of human and divine affairs that,
having tasted the sweetness of dominion, they began to dream of a democratic form of commonwealth for themselves. Elated first by the overthrow of my grandmother and then of my mother—and success certainly flattered them too greatly—and finally having long taken advantage of my years as a ward for the establishment of their democracy, they had already devoured in certain hope the power of tribunes, so that in a popular commonwealth, since they could readily lead the common people wherever they wished, they alone might direct the decisive moments of all affairs.
“Therefore, neither during my years as a ward nor afterward did any sedition occur without the seditious attempting to make these men patrons of their own fury and madness. Frequent calumnies against me were spread in their tribunician assemblies, not because I had committed some crime, but because I was king, which was regarded as worse than every crime. And because shame prevented them from openly professing this cause of their hatred, they carefully investigated my life and morals, magnifying even the smallest errors without limit and seizing even false rumors for calumny. Although they wished it to seem that they distinguished blame from office and vice from the man, the mask nevertheless sometimes fell from them unawares, and they betrayed by their own evidence the designs which they concealed with such great diligence: namely, that all kings and princes are enemies of the liberty of the Church and do not bear the yoke of Christ with equanimity. With the wholesomeness of this doctrine they fed their flocks.
“But because learned and upright men from the ministry, ashamed of this rashness and audacity, endeavored to recall the rash to prudence and the disorderly to moderation, and to correct the unsound in mind no less by example than by speech, the factious men then placed the one defense of their fury in parity. Relying upon it, wicked, audacious, and ignorant men might refute the pious, wise, and moderate. This parity is the mother of confusion and the enemy of unity, which is the parent of order. If an arrangement of this kind prevailed in the commonwealth just as it did in the Church, it would be more certain than certainty itself that all things must be thrown into confusion.
“If you love both, drive this plague from each—the Puritans, I mean—whom you can neither bind by benefits, make faithful by oath, nor constrain by promises; ambitious without measure, slanderous without cause, and breathing nothing except seditions and calumnies; men for whom there is one rule of conscience, not the authority of the divine word, but the vanity of their own inventions. I call that great
God to witness—and it is not lawful for one composing a testament to lie—that greater ingratitude or treachery can never be found among our Highland or Border robbers than among these fanatical scoundrels. Nor, if you have determined to live in peace, permit them to enjoy the same country with you, unless perhaps for the sake of testing your patience, as Socrates lived with Xanthippe.”
Whatever the mind dares to say or suspect concerning the Puritans is less than what that Most Serene King publicly judged in the same kingdom while those very men were still alive. From British, French, Belgic, and German practice, under the shadow of an imaginary king, they contrived a true confusion of all things: headlong, audacious, fiery, popular with the common people, dreaming of dominion, leading the people about, patrons in every sedition, among whom it was regarded as worse than every crime for you to be a king. These things are of such a kind that they alone can persuade a people eager for changes that government by the people is better than monarchy.
The pseudo-politicians nevertheless join them, and add oil to the furnace; that is, they add the appearance of the public good to superstition. This is their opinion: that cities do not flourish under kings; that talents and virtues are not held in esteem; and that everything depends upon liberty. I dispute against them in the work itself; for now, I disclose the sources of the evil. Aided by seditious theologians, when these men have crept into the mastership of a tribe, a council, a syndicship, or some other office, they first court the favor of the people, bring the magistracy into hatred and contempt, and, if fortune accommodates itself to their undertakings, cast it down from its height. In the council and in the assembly they proclaim that crimes are advantageous—the very crimes which bloodthirsty theologians had taught in the churches to be religious. Thus, with two bellows, superstition and the hope of private advantage, they drive the people into crime; then, when the people have been imbued with the contagion of wickedness, they employ them for profit until they involve them in utter destruction. For the people spend more upon these men in one half-year than upon their lawful lords in an entire decade.
The other origin of the evil is the example of those who are considered fortunate as a result of rebellion. This is the greatest enticement: when theologians have suppressed conscience and the religious obligation of an oath, politicians display a little gain, if they can show that those who have deserted their own prince flourish and are powerful. Moreover, the successful outcome of one nation does more to inflame the minds of fools
than the examples of ten nations which perished through rebellion avail to deter them. So much concerning doctrine that corrupts the commonwealth. It is permissible to speak freely and confidently about it, since the books stand publicly available. I shall speak more briefly about the other means by which monarchies are attacked—namely, the vaunting of aristocratic and democratic happiness—because the matter is so clear that whatever is said in words is more obscure than what shines forth in the facts.
The Most Serene King of England complains of both in his book The True Law of Free Monarchies. For he says that the error of the common people, proceeding from those who wished to be regarded as teachers of wisdom, brought destruction upon the most flourishing commonwealths and fear upon the others. He then says that rebellions have been established by example: “Impiety, caressed by fortune, which has not seldom granted a prosperous outcome to seditions stirred up against kings, has confirmed very many in this error.”
Machiavelli asserts—and I dispute against him in the first book—that no commonwealths flourish except free ones and that monarchies are destructive to cities. Very many who followed in his footsteps so extol the resources and happiness of those who passed from royal government into another form of commonwealth that they invite everyone to imitate them. My concern is with their orators, historians, and writers; I neither assume judgment over the commonwealth itself nor make another’s lawsuit my own.
The confederated Belgic provinces stand before us. Their advocates praise them in such a way that they attempt to entice kingdoms and nations into mutual alliances and into fellowship with what they present as a most powerful nation. They say that this small corner of Europe, contending with the Ocean, has grown through its assumption of liberty to such power that its strength must either be envied or feared by kings. They call its Estates most illustrious and most powerful; they immeasurably exalt everything belonging to them and disparage that of others. Not only books and speeches serve as examples of this, but also the lofty airs of merchants and agents in public affairs, who admire their own things and despise those of others.
Philipp Clüver dedicates his Ancient Germany to the Estates. He enumerates the first and greatest reason in this way: “Because YOU ALONE NOW, together with your neighbors and confederates, preserve with the greatest praise and glory the renown of the German name—most celebrated in Roman as well as Greek monuments from the most ancient times because of its immeasurable zeal for ancestral liberty and its most courageous defense—by those same deeds by which your ancestors once preserved it diligently, with the highest praise and glory, throughout the whole world among all nations, peoples, and kings.” Behold how royally he speaks! He thinks that his own countrymen ALONE ARE NOW Germans, while the others are either shadows or barbarians.
All their writers and merchants speak in accordance with that opinion, so that in many places the common people have now been thoroughly persuaded that their power is supreme, their resources infinite, and that alliance with them will render everyone invincible. Hence arise new hopes and new counsels, and in certain parts of Europe a desire to change the commonwealth that is as dreadful as it is calamitous. Hence we have seen civil wars raging with barbarous hatred, slaughters, and examples of bestial cruelty in many places, while through right and wrong men inflame themselves to obtain the power which they admire among their neighbors. In my treatise I shall teach, from the judgments of the most excellent men and from the custom and experience of every age, that very many are deceived by this doctrine and these examples.
As for the Batavian Estates, whose happiness appears to incite others to daring, the contrary judgments of two men make me doubtful: those of the Most Serene King of Great Britain and of Barnevelt—two men, I say, in one of whom there is royal authority, and in the other the fullest knowledge of that commonwealth. The king’s judgment was delivered in a public speech in the year 1609 at the assembly of the kingdom, first to the minds of all and afterward to print. He addresses his Scots in this way:
“As for the confederated provinces, there, certainly, after the recent truce and our peace with the Spaniard, with all human and divine things confused together, the order of the commonwealth has almost passed into anarchy; nor has this occurred without the direction of heavenly Justice. For those who received our schismatics, men devoted to their own opinions and turned away from the unity of our Church, and who opened, as it were, an asylum to all the hydras of religions, have now, from so manifold a contagion, been brought to such a point that they can scarcely say what religion they themselves defend. Thus they have now become men of no party and enemies to one another, although previously they could easily have been held together with us in the same communion of sacred rites and peace.”
Anyone can readily understand Barnevelt’s opinion from the Apology published by him. He complains that in 1586 he found the order inverted; that the governors of the cities were ill-disposed toward the Estates; that many preachers did not acknowledge the States; that the common people were alienated; that twelve per hundred was paid in interest and two coins to the brokers; that Leicester possessed greater authority than the States; that the burdens were greater than the revenues; that the people and the city magistrates desired peace; and that much money had been granted by the kings of France and Britain, yet matters had nevertheless come to such a point that
the burdens of expenditure exceeded every kind of revenue and contribution, however greatly increased, by twenty-six million. Finally, everything had grown to such an extent that the treasurers reported that the expenses could not be sustained and that the country would be reduced to desperation; for this reason he had become an advocate of a truce. If that old man spoke these things among his own countrymen and among men acquainted with the facts as truthfully as he did confidently, he makes the happiness of that commonwealth highly suspect to me. Although neighboring kings had given it more than twenty-five million pounds, it had nevertheless burdened its citizens so greatly that Holland and West Friesland, which at the beginning contributed scarcely 1,800,000 florins, were by the end compelled to pay 4,000,000 pounds and a further two million, and nevertheless to incur debt. For he himself professes all these things.
To maintain the commonwealth steadfastly against so many disadvantages and to bring back onto the path men drawn elsewhere either by superstition or by the hope of advantages is most difficult. This was what I proposed to do when I undertook the subject of politics. Many did this before me, and while I revere most of their splendid statements, I find three deviations and, as it were, rocks against which they strike in such a way that some injure the commonwealth through wickedness, others through excessive attachment, and still others through imprudence.
Those who through wickedness make the prince crafty, cunning, secretive, suspicious, and malevolent overthrow him. While ordering him to be cautious and afraid, they instruct him to confine his subjects like enclosed wild beasts. When subjects read such books, they become indignant; and when they endeavor to fortify themselves in opposition, rebellions are stirred up. Others contend so fiercely out of excessive attachment to their own form and the ideal which they have conceived that they despise all others. Someone born in a democracy thinks that the world will collapse unless the consuls come from the lowest common people. If his country is governed aristocratically, he scarcely regards those who lack a pedigree as human beings. I recently saw a British writer who attempted to prove that every nation not governed by royal command departs from natural law. Although the writings of these men commend one form of commonwealth, they are nevertheless destructive in other states.
Very many fall through imprudence. They labor at censuring the vices of princes and devote themselves wholly to prescribing laws, but do not instruct subjects to obey, although governing rightly matters little unless the man who commands right things is obeyed. Having therefore embraced all these matters briefly, Most Invincible
Emperor, I address and dedicate them to Your Majesty, not so that they may benefit you, but so that, through the title of your August Majesty, they may be recommended to the noble youth, who must be imbued from their tender years with the best and most salutary precepts of politics, so that they may someday be able to govern the commonwealth in the part entrusted to them. No one doubts that a political work is owed to Your Majesty, who is placed upon the highest summit of the world, since we behold expressed in you the model of the best emperor.
There are two principal virtues in a king: Piety and Justice. Prosperity in affairs follows Piety; the love and fidelity of subjects follow Justice. Not only your subjects but even your enemies have very frequently praised your Piety. It joins kings to God, so that they depend upon God, refer everything to God, and make their majesty a servant for extending His worship. They owe God a twofold worship: first because they are Christians, and second because they are kings. They pursue good things and avoid evil things because they are Christians; they command good things and prohibit evil things because they are kings.
When you entered upon this royal path of reigning, God attended you with His aid and protection. For He deposited with you pledges of His benevolence so great that nowhere are their equals found, and so singular that very few similar ones are discovered. While you were still an archduke, powerful and wealthy enemies with a great army suddenly attacked you when you were unprepared, and stubbornly continued the war they had begun even at an unsuitable season of the year. In this unexpected circumstance you by no means lost heart. You entrusted your cause to the just and omnipotent right hand of the Divine Being and requested aid. He gave it; He did not delay when you had been placed in straits, nor did He merely extricate you from the war, but, while the threat of doom still stood and dangers sounded around you, He raised you, not yet secure at home, to the kingdom of Bohemia. This appeared all the more wonderful the more manifestly the conflict between your enemies and the divine counsel appeared.
They were endeavoring to crush your fortune so that you might never gain access to your hereditary kingdoms and provinces. But the Inhabitant of Heaven, your protector, exalted your head and moved the nobles of Bohemia to crown you king while you were entangled in a serious war, amid the danger both of the war and of your rivals. This was an entirely new event, and scarcely is any such recorded in history: that those who could have delayed the business and remained spectators should wish to involve themselves in the contagion, expense, and danger of another’s war. But God willed it to occur at a dangerous time, both to raise you by so immediate a benefit and to show your enemies that they were kicking against the goad. When the war had at last been quieted, the Hungarians sought the King of Bohemia
as their king. That assembly was plainly agitated by great disturbances when, behold, amid the commotion of affairs, sorrowful news arrived from Bohemia: the nobles had cast off their fidelity, violated the magistracy, and were preparing arms with great determination. Secretly and openly, by deceit and by force, they were attempting to drive the Hungarians into fellowship with their most abominable crime. Certainly no one thought that the Hungarians would persevere in their design when they saw that, if they crowned as king one whom they knew would pursue his right by war, they would have to undertake war against their neighbors. Yet, moved not at all by the defection of others, they raised you through the very waves, while God held the helm, and placed you upon the high throne.
Nor was this the end of the dangers through which both the constancy of Your Majesty and the benevolence of the eternal Majesty toward you were to become renowned. Bohemia and its neighboring provinces had defected; Hungary was suddenly being inundated as if by a torrent; Austria was wavering; the hereditary dominions were being solicited; and the whole barbarian world was being stirred up against you. Yet the insolence and taunts of the enemy were more grievous than all these things. But God, the protector of kings and the vindicator of right and equity, reduced such turbulent counsels and so manifold a power to nothing and made your dangers glorious for you.
For while you were being pressed by war in Hungary and Bohemia, while threats were being cast from Batavia and Britain, and all Germany was held suspended in the greatest fear of the outcome, the Prince-Electors, following the direction of God and trusting in your virtue, by unanimous consent and every vote constituted you August Emperor and lord of affairs. When you had been adorned with the diadem and insignia of the Empire, they bound their fidelity by oath. They did this with as much resolution as if all those kingdoms and magnates had sought the imperial office for you through embassies. Not only did those whose judgment of your virtue was true and whose benevolence and respect were constant elect you by agreement, but even the man who accepted the election of the Bohemians was not permitted by God to deny you his vote—a wholly singular and distinguished proof of divine favor.
Nothing customarily appears more wonderful to me than that wretched vacillation of your enemies in their counsels. At the time when they could have harmed you very greatly with little or no labor, their mouths were constrained by bit and bridle, and they themselves were brought to do that which the divine hand had decreed should be done. When their strength had now been broken and yours made firmer, He permitted them freer reins, lest what they had intended should remain hidden. For what the Hungarians could have done while you were entangled in the Bohemian wars is evident from what they did afterward, when they set rivals against you and rebelled against you as though against a foreigner.
How wonderful it is that the Hungarians and others changed neither their fidelity nor their votes at the report of the Bohemian defection! Yet that transition certainly offered a favorable opportunity for changing the state of affairs without danger. Indeed, it is also a distinguished proof of divine kindness that they could neither postpone nor obstruct the assembly of the Empire by evasion or tumult. Instead, forgetful of all their stratagems, they armed you with the supreme authority and power of the Empire, so that it might be evident to the whole world that they were waging not only unjust wars against an innocent man but also impious wars against their own lord and emperor. Finally, your Helper adorned all those events with the distinguished victory for which the whole world congratulates you, and demonstrated that His gifts are without repentance. Behold for yourself the fruit of Piety, which possesses the fruit of the life which now is and of that which is to come.
The other imperial virtue is Justice, for the preservation of which the prince is appointed. The other virtues are personal; Justice belongs to others. Justice has been entrusted to the good faith of the prince; contempt for it is the plague of the state. This was the virtue that reconciled the minds of all to you. I am silent for now concerning the care for right and equity which you displayed in the causes of private persons—a care so great that no one complained against your tribunal, and that even those who did not love your Religion sought you as their prince and as the patron of Justice.
It is a distinguished trophy of Justice, and one pleasing to all Europe, that you preferred to submit the cause of your position and kingdoms to adjudication rather than to conduct it by war and shed blood. Therefore, we see that your cause has been approved not only by most of the princes of the Empire, but even by foreigners—the Frenchman, the Pole, the Dane, and the Swede—and indeed by the father-in-law of your enemy, who refused, by a destructive precedent dangerous even to himself, to raise his son-in-law into another man’s kingdom.
Your faithful subjects have declared their love toward you sufficiently and more than sufficiently. Although deceived and oppressed by garrisons, as soon as they were able they surrendered themselves to your commanders. Indeed, the farmers, whose judgment concerning a just and equitable prince is more sincere and whose love is most uncorrupted, joined you as soon as they perceived the assistance of your armies. They killed many who were unfaithful to you and oppressive to themselves; they did not permit the opposing soldiers, whom the anger of the victor had spared, to depart unharmed. When victory had been won, adherents of the Augsburg Confession triumphed no less than Catholics, because they perceived that they too had been liberated from Calvinist tyranny.
Therefore, with a great spirit protect and restore Justice. The greatest part of mankind is a friend to Justice; bound by love of you and by your benefaction, it will fortify your Empire under God. In this multitude I too pray for prosperity for you, and daily I pray: “O Lord, save the King.” But you: “Gird your sword upon your thigh, O Most Powerful. You have loved justice and hated iniquity; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows. For truth and meekness and justice, your right hand will lead you wonderfully.” Proceed therefore prosperously and reign. This is my prayer and the prayer of all who love true peace and justice.
At Mainz, in the year 1620, on the seventeenth day of December, on which, amid public rejoicing over the recovery of Bohemia, the Most Reverend and Most Illustrious Johann Schweikhard, Archbishop of the Holy See of Mainz, your Archchancellor throughout Germany and Electoral Prince, gave thanks with his subjects to GOD MOST GOOD, MOST GREAT, congratulated Your Majesty, and pronounced new vows for your safety and that of the whole Empire.