§1
With a design not merely insignificant but also foolish, and with a most sorrowful outcome, the kings of the Egyptians had introduced various monsters of gods and opinions so that, contending with one another in perpetual dissension and battles, their subjects could never conspire together. Diodorus Siculus, Book XI. It was altogether depraved and tyrannical to wish to stabilize the scepter by the blood of subjects and, as it were, gladiatorial spectacles, and for the sake of royal majesty—which was instituted for the safety and preservation of all—to overthrow the life and safety of the people. Truly they were ἀνδροφάγοι [man-eaters], kings who devoured their people, whose diadem could not stand without the blood of their own subjects. Indeed, pitiable were the nations which were compelled to fight so that they would not conspire. So many corpses were being snatched away lest the fatal band should fall.
That the design was also foolish and proceeded from the dizzying spirit which the Lord mingled with Egypt is evident both from the nature of the matter and from the outcome. They indeed endeavored by cruel cunning to render both factions subject to the kings, but they made the kings hateful to both; and while the factions disagreed with one another in perpetual conflicts, through that training they learned to conspire against the hated kings. For since a king cannot comply with the will of all, he must offend one party. But if he favors now this one and now that, depresses the victorious and raises the defeated so that strength and spirit are always available to the combatants, who can doubt that each will judge itself injured and will judge that the king weighs the fates of his subjects not by justice but by caprice?
Accordingly, in no kingdom were massacres of kings more frequent or more foul, until Egypt itself was divided into two hostile kingdoms and was always subdued with the greatest ease, although it surpassed all kingdoms in the nature of its location, the multitude of its warriors, and the abundance of provisions. Tyre alone resisted more than all Egypt; for in Ezekiel 26:18 Egypt is given as a reward to the army of Nebuchadnezzar for the labor which it endured at Tyre. Thereafter they were easily subdued and exhausted by the Persians, Greeks, and Romans; for to have entered Egypt was to have conquered it. This is the endeavor of the Stentors of this age: always to contrive something, always to harm the other party.
§2
Xenophon judged much more wisely in his Cyrus, whom he described as an exemplar of a good prince, Cyropaedia, Book VIII:
ἐλογίζετο ὡς εἰ πάντες οἱ κοινωνοὶ θεοσεβεῖς εἶεν, ἧττον ἂν αὐτοὺς ἐθέλειν περὶ τε ἀλλήλους ἀνόσιά τε ποιεῖν, ἢ περὶ αὐτόν.
Cyrus thought that, if all his associates were pious, they would be less willing to commit anything impious either against one another or against himself. Wisely indeed, and politically—indeed, even holily, if it had been granted to him to speak of the true God. For if a man judges and fears God to be the avenger of right and wrong, will he not readily restrain his hands from injury? But how will they spare their fellow citizens or kings if they judge them impious and patrons of the impious, against whom they regard wars as not only just and lawful, but commanded and holy?
§3
And, lest I pursue every individual matter, religion first separated East and West, and then wars arising from disputes did so; and the Empire which we possess in Germany we received, upon the defection of the Greeks, by the prerogative of faith. From the time of Charlemagne there has scarcely been any stronger heresy which did not excite wars. What disasters did the Simoniacal heresy produce in the times of the Henrys? Thereafter the Albigensians and the rest, and within the memory of our great-grandfathers the Hussites—did they not afflict the Church even more?
It is better to be silent about our own evils than to renew the pain in words. The fury of the peasants was kindled and extinguished in their own blood; the war of the princes against Caesar, and their punishment; the desertion and betrayal of the free cities by their princes, as Melanchthon says; the devastation of Brandenburg; the wars of Strasbourg, Cologne, Belgium, and France; the cruelties of the Huguenots; the English and Scottish massacres; the Swedish rebellion; the devastations of Transylvania; the disasters of Hungary; and what ought to have been named first, the Zwinglian battle lines among the Swiss. We can expect nothing else, especially since Pareus, on chapter 13 of the Epistle to the Romans, and Braumbomus, in Book X of the Flores Flaminiorum, deny that there can be an alliance with the pope and papists: an eternal war commanded by God.