§1
I do not mean that peace which, full of syncretisms, contention, distrust, and plots, awaits an opportunity for war, but a true and genuine peace which holds the same opinion concerning God and his worship. I confess that it is a great and arduous good, indeed a rare one, but nevertheless a good which we can attain.
It is a difficult good amid so great an obstinacy among dissenters and so great an audacity among those desiring contrary things; but because it is a gift of the divine power, it is permissible to hope that at some time, even among the unworthy, that immense mercy will command peace, agitated in so many ways, to stand firm. For since our nature was made for mutual friendship and peace, and since peace is sought even by war, human society would be frustrated of its proper end if there were no way to attain peace.
Indeed, the Scriptures would exhort us to concord and peace in vain if either by nature or by our fault we were enslaved to disputes. Since the Lord declares that he leaves peace to us and gives us his peace, John 14:27, and that he acted so that in him we might have peace, John 16:33; since the Apostle so often promises and desires for us the peace of GOD—Romans 1:7 and 2:10; 1 Corinthians 1:3; 2 Corinthians 1:2; Galatians 1:3; Ephesians 1:2; Philippians 1:2; 2 Thessalonians 1:2—since, I say, peace is promised so often, who can believe that Germany alone, deprived of peace for nearly a hundred years, possesses no return to its former peace?
§2
The disposition and nature of the German nation also avail greatly for conciliating concord. For the Germans, both by their own nature and by training and custom, are courteous and kindly, abhorrent from disputes and wars, and quiet like a tranquil sea unless stirred by the blasts of winds. Thus they have frequently lulled even the greatest discords without blood and for the most part lay down their hatreds together with their arms.
Although heresies, when they have grown strong and armed themselves with secular powers, generally rage atrociously—as did the Arian and Monothelite—Germany has nevertheless been milder toward its own entrails.
Let us consider only France or Britain, indeed Belgium: in one year it gave more Catholic blood, more martyrs to heaven, than Germany did in almost an entire century. Germany was indeed cruel in the rebellion against Emperor Charles and in the fury of the peasants, but religion alone was not alleged for those causes. The hatreds were civil, stirred up indeed by heretical agitators who preached, but not practiced by everyone for the propagation of heresy. Why, then, should we despair of our country, which is especially a pupil of peace?
§3
Recent examples of provinces converted in Germany also raise us to great hope. For when we see Bavaria, Franconia, Styria, great tracts around the Rhine, and the best part of Belgium rescued from the darkness of errors into the liberty of the children of God; when throughout France we see many thousands restored and established each year in possession of the ancient religion, why should we not think that the rest will agree in the same unity? We perceive peace growing daily, and shall we cast away hope for its complete increase? Dawn already glows red, the herald of full light; why should we put aside confidence in a bright day?
§4
Almost the same conviction belongs to those who err and follow heretics through ignorance, hope, fear, or some other affection—not because they judge that truth stands among them, but because they judge it levity and inconstancy to release what they have once seized. They think that by right of return they will go back to the ancient and apostolic faith of our forefathers, and that there will be no end of wandering until they return to the path by which the primitive Church ascended to heaven.
Thus we are taught by experience that now even threats, exiles, and confiscation of goods can scarcely impel the very few Catholics to desert their ancient piety, whereas at the beginning of the tumult a single Epicurean or tribunician sermon hurled whole flocks of peoples into Lutheranism or Calvinism. The heresies ranged abroad until they became recognized; now they have lost their strength, their onset has grown languid, they have completed their circuit, and now slide backward. Consider Lutheranism.
First, who is now a Lutheran in the opinion in which the Augsburg Confession stood? The Calvinists swear that all have departed from it. But let us omit these matters. Who is a Lutheran at all? Are the Ubiquitarians? The Synergists? The Osiandrians? The Flacians? Yet I do not inquire into these distinctions. I ask about the Lutherans’ strength. No one approaches them; many depart from them. They possess only one electorate, and that one strongly altered by Calvinism—so greatly, indeed, that Zwinglian operations insinuated themselves not only into the academies and the prince’s council but into the very secrets of conscience; for the elector’s confessors, by his own testimony, were Calvinists. Acts of Peucer.
They have lost the Rhenish and Bavarian Palatinates, Zweibrücken, Hesse, the congregations of Switzerland, Rhaetia, Holland, Zeeland, Friesland, and the churches of England. Their numbers are diminished in Poland, Lithuania, Sweden, most of Hungary, and Bohemia. They have lost the Catholic portion of Belgium, Bavaria, Styria, Troppau, and Franconia; in the Catholic electorates they have been compelled to abandon splendid conditions. They labor over Brandenburg and Prussia. Certain Lutheran cities, such as Hamburg and others, have now admitted Calvinist religious exercise; others gradually slide toward it. They are therefore driven into a narrow place and will shortly pass into all other things.
But since no one among them embraces Calvinism unless compelled, or assuredly very few do, it must be hoped that by far the greatest part can be brought to knowledge of the truth. So too it was formerly: heresies held their course, then fell and expired. The Simonians, Nicolaitans, Cerinthians, Ebionites, Menandrians, Basilidians, Carpocratians, Cainites, Marcionites, Valentinians, Archontics, and others almost perished within the first two centuries. The Montanists, Manichaeans, Novatians, and Donatists raged longer; most gravely of all the Arians, and the Iconoclasts who even now have revived. But the times in which they flourished must be distinguished from those in which they secretly increased or lay hidden while decreasing. The fury and tempest of them all quickly spent itself; the remnants lived longer.
§5
The cause must be taken from the very disposition and nature of heresy. For at the beginning, adorned with borrowed ornaments of the Scriptures and whitened with a certain antimony of truth, when it prostitutes itself to a world greedy for novelty and disdainful of ancient things, it easily entices minds ignorant of virtue by the image of good; for allurements draw more men than truth. But when, the flowing color and ornaments removed, it appears in its own skin like an aged and diseased prostitute, it makes its lovers flee far away and repels them.
How numerous were the lovers who knocked at the doors of the eastern Thais! But now how many desert the decrepit woman and transfer their loves elsewhere? With what great zeal and what exquisite blandishments does she retain a few? That heresy therefore tends toward destruction and would have perished long ago had it not from time to time struck curious minds with some novelty. Hence Osiander, Major, Flacius, and the Concordists added certain new pigments to the old and wrinkled woman; they even changed names so that they might hold by some novelty those whom they could not convince by truth.
Since, therefore, a certain old age of all the heresies appears, we are not far from peace. As for the fact that some think Calvinism is growing because by the cunning counsels of courtiers they place certain heralds of that sect in Lutheran chairs and mock the goodness of certain princes, they stray greatly from the truth. For by their importunity they stir hatreds and execrations and raise sluggish peoples to hope and desire for liberty. Thus the Saxon counselors affirm that the Lutherans who live under Calvinist lords earnestly hope and expect to be liberated by the Lutheran estates; indeed, all Lutherans who live among Calvinists confidently expect Calvinism to be abolished, as the same counselors say in Motive 12. Therefore not merely inexperienced men but practiced and prudent counselors think the end of Calvinism is at hand.
Since it is manifest that Spain, Italy, France, and Germany were once cleansed of Arians, Pelagians, Priscillianists, Albigensians, and the other heresies which widely reigned, and that the peoples returned to unity, we deservedly ought now also, after an interval of almost one hundred years, after horrible blasphemies and bloody wars, to hope for this from divine goodness.
§6
Nor do I think that our adversaries will deny it. Certainly, if they act consistently with their faith, they will also have to believe it. For Lutherans confidently and earnestly expect that they will soon be liberated by the estates of the Augsburg Confession and that Calvinism will be abolished, as the Saxon counselors say in Motive 12. The same men judge that the pontiff will perish; with their enemies removed, therefore, they fashion their own peace for themselves
and have already devoured it in hope. The Calvinists think the same things and judge that they can impose their peace upon both Lutherans and Catholics. Indeed, some do not despair that union and a synod can occur among so many heresies. Why, then, should the pious and faithful not at last expect true peace?
Peace is rightly hoped for even by the enemies of peace; nevertheless, there cannot be peace in evil or concord in error. Although some sometimes conspire in it, that peace cannot be lasting, nor the peace of all, indeed not even of many. For no falsehood lies so hidden that it is not sometime revealed; no lie is concealed either forever or from everyone; nothing is colored so plausibly that it deceives all. Deception is at last detected when it is secure.