§1
They also derive Syncretism from the civil alliance of princes. If peace exists among them, why should there not also be Syncretism in religion? Why do theologians prosecute one another? Most praiseworthy cities, renowned barons, illustrious counts, and most illustrious and serene princes have entered into counsels of alliance and holy peace. Why, therefore, do we preachers fight?
In the first place, no one except an atheist and Epicurean would say that the care of piety and ceremonies must be accommodated to the laws and treaties of human compacts, and that concord and dissension in religion, sacred rites, and faith depend upon the peace or hostilities of kingdoms. What then? Will you regulate the worship of the immeasurable deity by the laws of treaties—whether forced or shameful, and certainly always unstable? If your prince joins himself to the Ottoman, will you also judge that the worship of Mohammed must be tolerated? You will certainly do so, for you tolerate those whom, when you speak from the heart, you judge worse than Jews and Turks. What will you advise the Belgians if perhaps the States General enter into a treaty with the idolatrous Indians and Chinese? Will you judge it equitable for a Calvinist table to be established at Calicut, and will you permit it to be erected? Or an altar to the Calicutan god at Amsterdam?
“They do not agree with us in the foundation,” you will say. But I taught above that you too do not agree. Yet let it stand that you think civil pacifications ought to be arbiters of religions and faith, and that the manner of belief is to be learned not from the Church but from palaces and camps. What do you think will occur if hostility dissolves the friendship of princes or injuries break it? Will you then also judge that the peace of religion, the attendant of civil compacts, has been violated by the destruction of those compacts? Will the trumpet’s sound simultaneously rouse the thunderbolts of churches and the condemnations of chairs, and summon men to arms? If a battering ram strikes a wall, will the man who was formerly a brother presently be a heretic? These are impious, Epicurean, Machiavellian, and Satanic decrees.
§2
But what, then, is that union, league, or correspondence of princes?
Do they agree upon this: that they may assert the safety of their fatherland and dignity of the Empire, protect the authority of the supreme magistrate, contribute the necessary expenditure and arms for the needs of the Turkish war, ensure that judgments are held, and prevent the execution of adjudicated matters from being obstructed by the audacity and frauds of wicked men? If these things are their objects, there was no need of a new peace, since absolutely all princes of the Empire are bound both by the right of fidelity to Caesar to perform these things and by the promise made to their colleagues upon first entering their dominions. But that they looked toward something else everyone sees. How necessary was the alliance and confederation of the orthodox among themselves and with Catholic kingdoms and dynasties for their own blameless protection!
§3
But who are those princes? How many Lutherans are among them? And how can Lutherans be at religious peace with those by whom they experience Lutherans being expelled daily? Indeed, defection from Lutheranism began with that alliance. Diplomas were conceived concerning the non-offense of Calvinism, and cautious proscriptions of Lutherans were instituted under the name of dismissal precisely when those treaties were being made. Thus no one can doubt by confidence in whom princes hitherto Lutheran introduce Calvinism into their dominions. Therefore that civil peace, or correspondence, produced war and destruction for Lutheranism.
Peace and defense against the Papacy are displayed to the wretched peoples; the wealth and dignities of noble churches are displayed; rewards from another’s property are displayed, so that while Lutheran preachers gape eagerly after our possessions, they may unexpectedly be shaken from their own little nests. How great was the expectation among the Evangelicals when that alliance first began to grow! What pages, what pictures were thrust upon us for the terror of Catholics! They denied that the Catholic cause could stand for one or two years; they asserted that bishoprics had been distributed, prelatures given away, and monasteries described; the preachers were already inventing new titles for themselves, when behold, almost half of Lutheranism suddenly fell, and from two electorates it lost one. Can you not yet conjecture, can you not yet see and feel, O remnants of the Lutherans, that your safety is being attacked by these agreements and your quiet disturbed by Calvinist arts? Rome is put forward as the object of the treaty, and Berlin is captured. You thought that you were contributing resources and strength against the Roman Papacy, and with your own defenses you besiege and attack the Saxon Papacy, as the Calvinists call it.
He praises the cities, barons, counts, and dukes who are partners in the treaty and holy alliance; but a Calvinist praises them when he sees his own dominion enlarged and hopes by the same art to draw all men into the Genevan marshes.
These things pertain to all Lutherans, yet free cities must fear them more. But I prefer to set forth the judgment written by a senator of a noble state to the syndic of another city rather than my own.
LETTER OF SENATOR N. OF STATE N. TO N., SYNDIC OF CITY N.
§4
Most distinguished and prudent lord, most beloved cofather, you ask me to be an adviser to my citizens that they unite themselves with the corresponding princes against the Papists. Here I hesitate greatly and greatly marvel that you advised this to your people. For I see many grave things that greatly deter me. We shall either be conquered or conquer; or certainly, worn down on both sides by equal combat, we shall make peace. If we are conquered, who does not see what “woe to the conquered” is proposed? If peace must be made after disaster, why do we not rather retain it now? But I think that we cannot be victors without disaster—indeed, that we shall perish by victory itself. Hear my consideration of the individual outcomes.
First, war must be prepared if we enter the treaty. In that whole business direction belongs to the princes, counts, and nobles. They will conduct the levies; we shall contribute the money, either for our own share or as a loan for others. The soldier must be sustained in our territory, stipends given from our treasury, supplies from our granary; for you know whence these things are usually sought.
Second, journeys will be unsafe, commerce interrupted, and fields deserted. For if Prince N. sends even a thousand horsemen into our territory for forage, he will make us poor in one week. Hence scarcity at home, fear abroad, contempt for the mechanical arts; there is danger that the citizens’ hunger may stir up a tumult.
Third, if the Imperial Majesty should also command arms to be laid down and proscribe the contumacious, the goods of our citizens would be yielded to the fisc not merely throughout all Germany but throughout Gaul, Italy, and Belgium; persons would be seized, and extreme destruction and even internal seditions would have to be feared.
Fourth, when war is waged, since we are not nobles, barons, or counts, not only will the whole administration belong to others and we shall be accounted as peasants, but our cities will also be in their power. Everything must be given to men holding arms, and with the army they have collected by our money they will be able, if they wish, to compel us to concede whatever they desire. You will answer that those who love treaties and equity will not do this. Perhaps they will not; nevertheless, I fear that they may. Next, it is not for us to bring matters to the point that we hold a precarious liberty by another’s kindness and mercy rather than defend it by our prudence and counsels and by the ancient law of imperial favors. It is not the act of a senator faithfully counseling his fatherland to bring it about that, whenever a neighboring prince wishes, he can subject the city—to suspend liberty from another’s judgment and nod rather than fortify it by domestic counsels and defenses. I do not judge even that city free whose fortune a more powerful neighbor carries from his belt. Certainly, while the war that will be waged at our expense endures, one noble centurion will possess more power than our senate and people.
Fifth, if the war is prolonged, how shall we sustain the expense for five or six years, with the fields devastated, the citizens vexed, the treasury exhausted, and commerce removed, when now we cannot bear even one winter? Do not our citizens’ spirits fall if they hear that the Frankfurt fairs were less profitable? What do you think will occur if all of them are abolished?
Sixth, if we are conquered—which a wise man ought to fear as much as he hopes for victory—the condition of all conquered by adverse fortune will indeed be wretched, but that of cities most wretched. For princes have relatives, kinsmen by marriage, friends, intercessors on the adverse side; they will arrange marriages with the victors; they will cast the cause of the war upon their counselors; this one’s youth, that one’s old age, another’s merits, and some men’s ancestors will receive pardon. But the cities
which are free by the favor of Caesar alone—who will protect them? Liberty will be diminished by a single word, expenses demanded back, new magistrates established, and much exacted. The reconciled princes themselves will be appointed executors; we, I say, will be demanded by the victor as plunder.
Seventh, you will say that we shall conquer. If this were an oracle, not a man’s conjecture, it could perhaps move a soldier to battle; nevertheless, it ought not to induce a senator of the city of N. to undertake war. For I think victory must be feared: first because it will bring no advantage, next because it will bring extreme dangers. Furthermore, what benefit will our city derive if Prince N. conquers Prince N., expels him, and occupies his dominion? You know that I speak of those upon whose border we dwell. Will some prefecture sprinkle us, so that some remnants appear to have flowed down to us from his great fortune? First, even if he did this, its annual revenue would nevertheless not compensate for the expense we incurred. Next, he will scarcely do it; so many centurions, nobles, barons, counts, and princes through whom he conquered will surround him that we peasants—or, if you prefer, city nobles—will not even possess access. Shall we buy uncertain hope at a certain cost?
Who does not know how great a danger we too, even as victors, will undergo? For I call it a danger because, though free now before the war, as victors we shall be in the power of a stronger man. You know that we are sustained by commerce not merely from the regions of two princes but from their fields, pastures, and forests; we cannot place a foot outside without being in the territory of one or the other. Yet our liberty is safe because that ecclesiastical prince is peaceful and will not permit the other to become more powerful by the accession of our city. Thus their hostility is our safety. If by our labor the secular prince expels the ecclesiastic, he will also place us under the yoke whenever he wishes. And, believe me, a time will come when he wishes it.
Melanchthon once complained in a letter to Milichius that the cities had been both deserted and betrayed by idle princes; and he hoped that they would therefore be more moderate and seek more upright counsels for making peace. The wretched princes could betray and desert the cities; will prosperous princes not wish to rule them when they possess the power?
Eighth, examples terrify me. For since we and most cities profess Luther’s doctrine, while the princes profess the Calvinist, there is no doubt that they will wish to have conquered for themselves and to introduce the Genevan exercise of religion. Thus, scattered among powerful Calvinists, we shall be a few Lutheran cities. First, therefore, little by little our citizens and youths will imbibe love of Calvinism through proximity and commerce; syndics, secretaries, and some senators will favor Zwinglianism—for even now there are men who sell themselves to the Calvinists and sell their opinions. Then they will also seek the exercise of their religion and will extort it through great intercessors. We have recently seen it effected in a famous emporium that the city should lie open even to foreigners and foreign Calvinists.
Next, disputes are accustomed to arise among neighbors. Who will administer justice to the weaker or execute by deed a just sentence? Third, at this very time, when they need our aid, solicit our money, and greatly fear their adversaries, do they grant us anything? Consider not Cologne, which because it is Catholic they judged must be afflicted, but the cities of our—that is, Lutheran—faith. Have they not begun, by introducing foreigners from Gaul and Belgium, to oppress and constrain those cities by others? See the new towns established upon the Main and Rhine for draining the most ancient cities, so that they may transfer the commerce, wealth, and life of the ancient cities into their own lands. Do you doubt that they will do this when they see themselves able, when you see them attempt it while they cannot? I believe they will not desire to possess wealthy cities which they now labor at such expense and odium to transfer! “They will not do it,” you say. I prefer to take care that they cannot rather than await their mercy when they can.
You possess the protocols of proceedings; you are not a stranger in your state. Weigh what they have done; from the rules of prudence you will more easily judge what they will do.
This is the sum: we shall have to sustain the weight of war; its outcome is uncertain, its calamity most certain. If we are conquered, we shall be the victor’s plunder; we shall be betrayed, as Philip says was formerly done, by idle princes. If we conquer, we shall become an accession to the plunder for men more powerful than ourselves. Therefore, since in this confederation either destruction or servitude is proposed to us—both a great evil, but more pitiable because it is proposed that it be purchased with our own money—we shall pass over ancient things and protect our liberty by fidelity toward Caesar, quiet toward our equals, and humanity toward our neighbors. Farewell, and impart counsels thus to your citizens, lest your fidelity toward the state appear to have wavered in doubtful times. I have said what belongs to my judgment.
Thus he writes; and I suspect that these are the reasons why most cities have withdrawn from that imaginary treaty or await an opportunity for honorable withdrawal. But I willingly pass over such matters, although not altogether foreign to my undertaking, since they were nevertheless not proposed for my consideration.