§ 1. First, indeed, this one thing must be done in the commonwealth: that one true and ancient faith, handed down by the Scriptures and apostolic tradition and known to the holy Fathers, be taught and preserved after all superstitions have been torn out.
For the conflicts of those who think differently not only rupture peace, but also break covenants, religion, and fear of the divine power joined with veneration. For no one readily enters into friendship with one whom he knows to be an enemy of God. And the illustrious example of Theodoric, commander of Africa, is praised: for although he was an Arian, he nevertheless immediately killed a deacon who had defected to Arianism in order to gain the prince’s favor—not through an error of understanding, but through the baseness of flattery; for he judged that one who had violated faith with God would not keep faith with him. Without faith, therefore, friendship cannot exist, since friendship is agreement in human and divine things together with charity. This agreement does not exist if each regards the other as impious and detestable. Then all strive, with a certain great desire, to protect and increase their own religion. Our age teaches this, which has seen no heresy so foul, so abhorrent from piety and reason, that it has not embraced it most eagerly—although, as is the custom of those who love greatly, it has very quickly grown weary of it. Hence the most bloody wars are those waged from an opinion of piety, in which killing is judged holiness and falling in battle happiness. No regard is had for affections or kinships; public and domestic peace is disturbed; battles are mingled in the same house; the magistrate necessarily has one part of the people, and often both, as an enemy, for he can comply with only one; and his authority falls, since he is judged impious and profane by the greater number. But these matters have already been discussed above. Let us now set forth the means of preserving religion.
§ 2. The first thing, and as it were the foundation for preserving truth and faith, is to resist vices, beat down the arrogance of subjects, restrain lusts, and set a limit to avarice. No heresy has ever arisen for its own sake: through the novelty of a superstition, nourishment or impunity has been sought for some vice. A human being whom his crimes weigh down is readily driven into error; and just as there are certain prognoses of diseases in a human being, so in the commonwealth there are προγνώσεις, and conjectures, of heresies and superstitions. Seneca speaks truly in Book III of On Anger, chapter 10:
“It is an old saying that a weary man seeks a quarrel. But the same is true of a hungry and a thirsty man, and of every human being whom anything torments. For just as sores hurt at a light touch, and afterward even at the suspicion of a touch, so an afflicted mind takes offense at the slightest thing, to such a degree that a greeting, a letter, a speech, and a question summon certain persons into a quarrel. Diseased parts are never touched without complaint. It is therefore best to apply a remedy to oneself at the first sensation of the evil; then also to grant the least possible liberty to one’s own words and to check the impulse. But it is easy to detect one’s passions when they first arise: signs precede the disease. Just as indications of storm and rain come before the things themselves, so there are certain forerunners of anger, love, and all those tempests which torment minds. Those who are accustomed to be seized by epilepsy understand that an attack is already approaching if warmth has left the extremities, if their sight is wavering and there is a trembling of the sinews, if memory slips away and the head grows dizzy. They therefore anticipate the incipient cause with their customary remedies, and whatever estranges the mind is repelled by smell and taste; or they fight cold and stiffness with fomentations; or, if the medicine has accomplished too little, they avoid the crowd and fall without a witness. It will profit us to know our disease and to crush its powers before they have room to spread. Let us see what it is that especially excites us. One person is moved by insults in words, another by insults in deeds. This man wishes his nobility to be spared, that man his beauty; one desires to be accounted the most elegant, another the most learned; this one is intolerant of pride, that one of obstinacy; one does not think slaves worthy of his anger; this one is savage within his house and mild outside it; one judges it an odium to be asked, another an insult not to be asked. Not all are struck on the same side.”
Heresies arise on account of each of these things: hope has driven one person, fear another, indignation another, drunkenness another, and lust and ambition very many, into new opinions and sects.
§ 3. A prudent magistrate will observe and correct these things in the commonwealth. The ambition of Jeroboam alone introduced superstition among the ten tribes; partly ambition and partly court hatreds produced the dissensions of the Pharisees and Sadducees, when hypocrites began to creep up to powerful men by evil arts. This is, and always has been, the disposition of heretics: before they rendered themselves unworthy of the fellowship of the faithful and liable to punishments through error and obstinacy, and before they separated themselves with the loss of the people, they did so through crimes. What Cyprian writes concerning Novatus in Epistle 49 applies to them all:
“For nothing concerning Novatus needed to be reported from there to you, since he ought rather to be exposed to you by us: Novatus, always greedy for revolutions, raging with the insatiable rapacity of avarice, swollen with the arrogance and stupor of a proud swelling, always ill-known to the bishops here, always condemned by the voice of all the priests as a heretic and a perfidious man; always inquisitive in order to betray, flattering in addition in order to deceive, never faithful in order to love; a firebrand and flame for kindling the conflagrations of sedition, a whirlwind and tempest for bringing about shipwrecks of faith, an enemy of quiet, an adversary of tranquillity, a foe of peace.”
Then he describes his character in such a way that he seems to portray the wrathfulness of Hus, the luxury of Luther, the cruelty of Zwingli, the lusts of Calvin and Beza, and the secret murders of the Anabaptists:
“Nor,” he says, “should anyone wonder at this in such men. Evil men are always carried along, demented by their own fury, and after they have committed crimes they are agitated by the very consciousness of a criminal mind. Nor can those remain in the Church of God who have maintained neither divine and ecclesiastical discipline in the conduct of their actions nor the peace of good morals. People despoiled by him, widows defrauded, and monies also denied to the Church exact from him those punishments which we behold in his madness. His father also
died of hunger in a village, and afterward, at his death, was not even buried by him. His wife’s womb was struck by his heel, and, the miscarriage being hastened, the offspring was forced out unto parricide. And does he now dare to condemn the hands of those who sacrifice, when he himself is more guilty in the feet by which the son who was being born was killed? He had long feared this consciousness of his crimes. On this account he held it as certain that he would not only be expelled from the presbyterate but also prohibited from communion; and, as the brethren pressed the matter, the day of examination was imminent, on which his cause would be heard before us, had persecution not come first. Receiving this as a certain object of prayer whereby he might escape and gain exemption from condemnation, he committed and confounded all these things, so that he who was due to be cast out of and excluded from the Church might anticipate the judgment of the priests by a voluntary departure—as though to have anticipated the sentence were to have escaped the punishment.”
Such things apply to all the ancients. Lust drove Nicolaus of Antioch into heresy; no cause other than monstrous lusts severed Cerinthus, Menander, the Gnostics, and the Manichaeans from the Church. It is not necessary to speak of the Donatists, Arians, Macedonians, and Mohammedans. Concerning Luther, Oecolampadius, Carlstadt, Zwingli, Calvin, Menno, and the rest, they themselves bear mutual witness that they were most corrupt in disposition, practice, and morals. The magistrate, therefore, should hold as entrusted to himself what the Apostle sets before Timothy, 1 Timothy 1:18: “This precept I entrust to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies going before concerning you, that in them you may wage the good warfare, having faith and a good conscience, which some, rejecting, have suffered shipwreck concerning the faith; among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have delivered to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.”
§ 4. The second thing is that sacred doctrine be investigated with great care and zeal; that suitable teachers be appointed; and that they labor to teach, preach, catechize, and profit others by word and example. For since faith is from hearing: “How shall they believe him whom they have not heard?” Romans 10:14. “And how shall they hear without one preaching? But how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: How beautiful are the feet of those who proclaim peace, of those who proclaim good things! But not all obey the Gospel. For Isaiah says: Lord, who has believed our report? Therefore faith is from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. But I say: Have they not heard? Indeed, their sound has gone forth into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the whole world.”
For there was no other cause of so many errors than that sacred doctrine was neglected, and ignorant, profane men and soldiers occupied the benefices, priesthoods, and honors of the learned: little children wailing in their cradles were made bishops; scarcely born, they were already abbots.
§ 5. The third thing, which I have already advised above, is that even those whose dignity, as it is superior to every command, is likewise accustomed to be impatient of admonitions, should hear bishops and teachers. Most praiseworthy is that law of Gratian, Valentinian, and Theodosius, Augusti, Title 2, law With every innovation ceasing: “We command that antiquity and the ancient ecclesiastical canons, which have prevailed until now, be preserved also throughout all the provinces of Illyricum; so that, if any matter of doubt should arise, it ought to be reserved—not without the knowledge of the most reverend man, the bishop of the holy law of the Church of the city of Constantinople, which rejoices in the prerogative of ancient Rome—for a sacerdotal assembly and holy judgment.”
Those emperors acted excellently, according to the mind and judgment of Constantine the Great, who attended the Council of Nicaea not as lord, but as disciple. Theodosius not only valued Ambrose, who opposed and rebuked him, more highly than the flatterers of his purple, but also loved him. For flattery, when it becomes apparent, offends great men, because it is a reproach of pride; sincerity is loved, because it is confidence in virtue. Since bishops have been commanded by the severe law of God to persevere in teaching, admonishing, reproving, and punishing, even when death is proposed as the penalty, no one ought to doubt that the necessity of obeying has been imposed upon all, since so weighty a province of ecclesiastical government is enjoined upon them. But if that principle is removed, truth cannot be defended for long. Golden are the admonitions—but strong ones, and given to the strong—of the most valiant martyr Saint Cyprian in Epistle 55:
“But if the matter is thus, dearest brother, that the boldness of the most wicked is feared, and that which evil men cannot accomplish by law and equity they accomplish by rashness and desperation, then it is all over with the vigor of the episcopate and with the sublime and divine power of governing the Church; nor can we any longer either endure as Christians or be Christians, if matters have come to this, that we should fear the threats and snares of the lost. For Gentiles and Jews threaten, and heretics and all whose breasts and minds the devil has besieged daily testify with a furious voice to their poisoned rage; nevertheless one must not yield merely because they threaten, nor is the adversary and enemy therefore greater than Christ because he claims and assumes so much for himself in the world. There must remain with us, dearest brother, the immovable strength of faith, and a stable and unshaken virtue must withstand all assaults and attacks of the barking waves, by the strength and mass of an opposing rock. Nor does it matter whence terror or danger comes to a bishop, who lives exposed to terrors and dangers and yet is rendered glorious by those very terrors and dangers. For we ought not to consider and behold only the threats of Gentiles or Jews, when we see that the Lord himself was seized by his brethren and betrayed by him whom he himself had chosen as an Apostle; and in the beginnings of the world none but a brother killed righteous Abel, and a hostile brother pursued the fleeing Jacob, and the boy Joseph was sold by his brethren; while in the Gospel also we read it to have been foretold that those of one’s household would be enemies the more, and that those who had first been joined by the sacrament of unanimity would themselves deliver one another up. It matters nothing who delivers up or rages, when God permits those whom he disposes to be crowned to be delivered up. For it is no disgrace to us to suffer from brethren what Christ suffered; nor is it glory to them to do what Judas did.”
§ 6. The fourth thing is that provision be made aright not only for the learning and integrity of life of bishops and teachers, but that they also be fortified with resources and authority. For if the dignity of governors and judges must be strengthened so that by the excellence of lawful power they may settle civil controversies, with how much ampler majesty must those be adorned who judge concerning heavenly and eternal matters? I am not unaware that the resources of bishops and the clergy appear excessive to many; but I shall dispute concerning that matter in the book on the ecclesiastical magistracy. For now I advise that it profits the commonwealth very greatly if the resources of the churches are great. For first, if the prelates of religion live upon a very slender crust of bread, they are turned toward cares for bodily things; and not only do they lose the opportunity for studies, but they cannot even procure suitable books.
Then they are readily despised not only by the rich and arrogant, but also by the moderate. For this reason the Romans, among whom
worshipers of the gods were nevertheless held in great contempt, and some were even infamous, added dignity together with the thing itself to the supreme pontiff. Certainly under the old law the majesty of the priesthood was not much less than that of the kingdom, and at length it even coalesced with the kingdom. Third, experience has taught that, when priests are occupied with solicitude for domestic affairs and distracted by the evils of their household, the teachers themselves treat sacred doctrine incidentally and hold it, as it were, in second place; for their first care is living, their second teaching. Hence, if we look upon the Lutherans and Calvinists, we shall easily see that, after the heat of the first fury subsided, and after the multitude of apostates—who, educated in Catholic academies, turned their knowledge into poisons—failed, all things are full of ignorance, impiety, and contentions, and that the name of evangelical ministers is now utterly despised. For because most of them are fathers of families and poor, they are led more by hunger than by piety to retail fables to the people. Hence through fear and hope they are pliable in every direction, and, as actors are accustomed to do, they accommodate themselves to the theater. They hold their reputation and the opinion of their constancy cheap while they gape after the increase of their property.
Therefore, in order that the prince may have prelates and teachers of religion who are constant, of good reputation, noble, powerful, and faithful to the kingdom, he will increase their advantages and will even entrust fortresses and courts to them, as we see done in the Empire and in other kingdoms. For since they are devoted to peace and have remote from them causes for raising tumult, they very greatly assist the cause of the commonwealth.
§ 7. The fifth thing, and a solid safeguard against novelty and discord, is that the handles and beginnings of contentions be cut off, the wantonness of intellects be restrained, and those who judge it more glorious to dispute than to live be banished betimes. The king of Britain shrewdly advised the nobles of Holland to crush the Arminians in the blade; if they had done this, there would have been no need to fight against so great a crop.
This evil is not in the people but in the leading men, and it was so of old. Cyprian, Epistle 64: “But as to contention and guile, what does it concern me to speak, when those vices are more grievous not among the common people, but in our own number?” The mother of these diseases, however, is pride and the greed for human praise, which also often begets hypocrisy.
True is the complaint of a great man: “For often I have perceived, with sorrow and groaning, that many disturbances among the weak are brought about through the contentious obstinacy or superstitious timidity of certain brethren. In matters of this kind, which can be brought to no certain conclusion either by the authority of Holy Scripture, by the tradition of the universal Church, or by usefulness for the correction of life—merely because there lies beneath them some manner of reasoning on the part of the person thinking, or because he himself was thus accustomed in his own country, or because he saw it where he regards his sojourn, the farther removed from his own people, as having made him the more learned—they stir up questions so litigious that they judge nothing right except what they themselves do.”
When this zeal for contention rushes upon the commonwealth and religion, it excites the greatest quarrels and hatreds among the closest friends and carries them into the contrary error. Thus Eutyches, by assailing Nestorius, plunged into heresy.
§ 8. Frederick, Elector Palatine, acted advisedly of old when, at the beginning of the changed religion, the Academy of Heidelberg was divided into two factions, Lutheran and Calvinist: he enjoined silence upon both parties. The nobles of Holland acted advisedly when they endeavored to establish concord between the old and new Calvinists and commanded that no one accuse or condemn another of impiety. But where superstition is at issue on both sides, there can be no stable concord, unlike when the liberty of error against truth is taken away. At the beginning of emerging heresies, all demanded, as if by a certain right, the authority of Scripture and the liberty of prophesying or interpreting. But that liberty of errors afflicted the commonwealth in many ways. For it always changes everything, and soon seeks again what it changed, or turns it in another direction. Julian, the most cunning tyrant and apostate, was not ignorant of this; for by an entirely new kind of persecution he inflicted more damage upon the churches than by raging against them. For he permitted each person to live according to his own judgment and to teach according to his own rite, so that by license he might increase the dissensions of Christians.
But if the magistrate should seriously weigh the evils that emerge, he will readily understand that, just as, if license to steal, commit adultery, and rob is permitted, all crimes and shameful acts will soon inundate everything, so, where wickedness has been introduced of thinking about God at will, of blaspheming, and of impious ceremonies and rites—a wickedness destined to range most freely against everything and everyone—the commonwealth must necessarily collapse.
§ 9. The sixth safeguard for preserving religion is the prudent force and compulsion, fines, and punishments employed by the prince and every magistrate according to the laws. I know that it appears harsh to give laws to free minds and bind consciences, since each person ought to be the arbiter of his own salvation or destruction, and God himself is not accustomed to compel anyone to salvation. Indeed, this appears absurd to many, since that severity of laws makes hypocrites, not worshipers of true piety. Do you think that by threats and fear of torments you can compel anyone to love God, or to judge true what he thinks is false?
Nevertheless, not only has this right been given to the prince, but without the crime of neglecting his duty he can in no way omit some severity. When Saint Augustine was consulted concerning this matter, he answered in this manner:
“It displeases you that you are dragged to salvation, although you have dragged so many of ours to destruction. For what do we wish except that you be apprehended and brought forward and preserved, lest you perish? But whatever injury you have suffered in your body, you did to yourself, for you refused to use the beast of burden immediately brought to you and dashed yourself heavily upon the ground. For indeed the other man who was brought with you, your colleague, arrived unhurt, because he did no such things to himself. But you do not think that even this ought to have been done to you, because you judge that no one should be compelled to good. Attend to what the Apostle said: ‘He who desires the episcopate desires a good work’; and nevertheless, in order that they may undertake the episcopate, so many are held unwillingly, led away, shut in, guarded, and suffer so many things which they do not wish, until there is present in them the will to undertake the good work. How much more must you be dragged away from the pernicious error in which you are enemies to us and led to the truth, either to recognize or to choose it—not only that you may possess honor wholesomely, but also that you may not perish most wickedly. You say that God gave free will and that therefore a human being ought not to be compelled even to good. Why, then, are those of whom I spoke above compelled to good? Attend, therefore, to what you do not wish to consider. A good will is mercifully bestowed precisely so that a human being’s evil will may be directed. For who does not know that a human being is condemned only by the desert of an evil will, and is delivered only if he has had a good will? Nevertheless, those who are loved must not therefore be permitted, with impunity and cruelty, to follow their evil will; but, where power is given, they must both be prohibited
from evil and compelled to good.
“For if an evil will must always be permitted its own liberty, why were the Israelites, refusing and murmuring, prohibited from evil by such harsh scourges and compelled toward the Promised Land? If an evil will must be permitted its own liberty, why was Paul not permitted to go where he was going with the most wicked will by which he persecuted the Church, but was laid low that he might be blinded, and blinded that he might be changed, changed that he might be sent, and sent that he might suffer for truth the same things that he had done in error? If an evil will must always be permitted its own liberty, why is a father admonished in the Holy Scriptures not only to rebuke a stubborn son with words, but also to beat his sides, so that, compelled and subdued, he may be directed to good discipline? Hence the same Scripture says: ‘You indeed strike him with the rod, but you deliver his soul from death.’ If an evil will must always be permitted its own liberty, why are negligent shepherds rebuked, and why is it said to them: ‘You did not call back the wandering sheep; you did not seek the lost’? You too are Christ’s sheep; you bear the Lord’s mark in the sacrament which you received, but you wander and perish.
“Let us not therefore be displeased with ourselves because we call back the wandering and seek the lost. For we do the will of the Lord, who admonishes us to compel you to return to his fold, better than we would consent to the will of wandering sheep and permit you to perish. Therefore do not now say what I hear you say continually: ‘Thus I wish to wander; thus I wish to perish.’ For we do not permit this at all, so far as we are able. Just now, when you cast yourself into the well so that you might die, you assuredly did so by free will. But how cruel would the servants of God be if they permitted you this evil will and did not deliver you from that death? Who would not deservedly blame them? Who would not rightly judge them impious? And yet you willingly cast yourself into the water so that you might die; they raised you unwilling from the water, lest you die. You acted according to your will, but unto your destruction; they acted contrary to your will, but for the sake of your salvation. If, therefore, this bodily salvation must be guarded in such a way that it is preserved even in the unwilling by those who love them, how much more must that spiritual salvation be guarded, in the desertion of which eternal death is feared?”
§ 10. The seventh thing is what was customary of old: the prohibition of pestilential books. To our sectaries this indeed appeared unjust at the beginning, but now they themselves employ the same law, and prohibit not only books of the Calvinists but even those of their own people. There are the complaints of Illyricus and of others: that the presses of Wittenberg and Leipzig stand open to some and are closed to the rest. Since our most learned Jacob Gretser has written most accurately concerning this matter, I refer the reader to him.