§1
What wind is to the ocean, the inconstancy of frivolous intellects is to the Church: the source of heresies. Gusts stir a tranquil sea and make it infamous for shipwrecks; the blast of winds increases a kindled fire without limit and renders useless the labors of those extinguishing it. Heresies are so called by a Greek word, from the meaning of choice, which a man employs either in establishing or in embracing them. Tertullian, Book Against Heretics, chapter 5: “Therefore, because they introduce a thing by their own judgment, they choose it.” Hence they insert Aristotle, who instituted dialectic for them—an artificer dexterous in building up and destroying, constrained in opinions, harsh in conjectures, a producer of contentions in arguments, troublesome even to itself, retracting everything lest it should have treated anything at all. Hence those fables and interminable genealogies, unfruitful questions, and discourses creeping like a cancer, from which the Apostle, restraining us, expressly testifies that philosophy must be guarded against. Colossians 2. Hence the rejection of that simplicity by which the Lord is sought. Hence the novel assertors of fate and those who introduce a Stoic, Platonic, and Epicurean Christianity.
It belongs to princes to avert so great an evil. If this is removed, heresies will now cease to exist. For we have no need of curiosity after Christ Jesus, nor of inquiry after the Gospel; when we believe it, we desire to believe nothing beyond it. For this we believe first: that there is nothing which we ought to believe beyond it. Tertullian, Against Heresies. And so Tertullian already long ago complained that philosophers were the patriarchs of heretics, that a novel apparatus was prepared from the seed of philosophers, and that heresies were animated from their intellects. This entire evil arises from curiosity and
the display of knowledge, while men prefer to be masters of their own inventions rather than disciples of truth; they move everything and hold nothing, full of new questions and empty of faith. Hence the succession of contentions, the rise of novelties, the enormity of shameful opinions, and the cruelty of civil wars. For since nothing is so firmly constructed by any intellect that an equally keen intellect cannot be found on the opposite side, a perpetual contest concerning the glory of memory, dexterity, and acuteness necessarily arises, so that religion has now become a battle of intellects, not a sincere devotion to the worship of the deity.
§2
The exercise could be tolerated if it spent its labor upon childish rudiments, was tormented among the thorn-brakes of dialectic, played in physics, or constructed admiration of itself from mathematics. But now to seek the glory of intellect at the peril of souls, to draw the state into partnership in contention, and to mingle scholastic dust with citizens’ blood—as it is impious and cruel, so it is most customary in our age.
§3
“But he possesses a great and perspicacious intellect, worthy for many to follow.” Would that he possessed a good disposition rather than a great intellect, if he does not possess both, so that there may be both a good will and a perspicacious understanding. If the intellect is quick, take care that it is not changeable, cunning, and inconstant. If it is swift, let it be directed toward virtue: he who runs swiftly easily rushes headlong. If it is acute, it is therefore fragile: sharp things are easily broken. And there is a certain deceptive acuteness—odious, sophistical, hostile to wisdom, and dangerous to religion. Certain most acute and excellent intellects, says Augustine, Letter 1 to Macedonius, err all the more greatly in proportion as they run forward more confidently, as though by their own powers, and have not simply and truthfully sought God to show them the way. If those great intellects indulge themselves, they presently swell and cease to be sound; and what they have once rashly said, they always defend, until at last they consume themselves by their own labor.
§4
But they think it right and lawful that liberty of prophesying be conceded to them. Vorstius alleges this, Socinus this, and the other plagues this. And they allege it not so that they may instruct men in religion, but so that they may disturb them. In Clement, Stromata 1, they are ζηλωταὶ τεχνυδρίων, ἐριδαντέες καὶ ἱμαντελικτέες: “zealots of petty arts, contentious men, and stitchers of tortuous lawsuits.” That liberty always desires more than is lawful; therefore its untamed license must be restrained, otherwise nothing of the faith except its name will be retained.
It is of no consequence to relate examples: our age, the mother of monstrous heresies, is itself an example. Luther, employing undue liberty at the beginning, innovated the explanation of Scripture—that is, the instruments of faith. Not a thousand Cyprians, not a thousand Augustines, not a thousand others, whether by the authority of their sanctity or the splendor of their learning, recalled the man, obstinate in his own imagination, from innovation: to interpolate the Scriptures, to receive them with a new understanding, to thrust monstrous dogmas upon the world. Why should the same thing not be lawful for Zwingli which was assigned to Luther as praise? Once the die has been cast, once they have crossed the Rubicon, bringing an abominable war upon Mother Church, each rests upon his own authority in explanations of Scripture and is wise by his own intellect. He is not held by the judgment of the whole Church, which he comes to attack; he does not revere antiquity, which he ascribes to Antichrist. Therefore he is free and of his own right; he trusts himself alone; he alone is himself the author of his own religion. And we see it occur that new masters arise in individual years because individuals teach according to their own judgment. Nor can those who have departed from the first heretics be reproved by those whom they deserted, for the latter left the matrix and original Church of the faith. If deserters from the camp placed the military oath beneath their fear, what wonder is it if they are not faithful even to the enemies from whom they remember that they received rewards for perfidy? And so daily desertions occur to new heresies, or to old ones interpolated and brought upon the stage in a new form, because the vanity of the world loves to become renowned through new inventions. Nor is there any end of innovating, renewing, and disguising, because the license of fabricating possesses not only impunity but even glory, and, if it draws tumults after it, enormous profit.
§5
I produce witnesses—not indeed weighty ones, but, since no one lies to his own disgrace, trustworthy at least in this cause. They are the preachers from the Eisleben conventicle, who complain in the preface to the Mansfeld Confession that many and various corruptions of Christian doctrine and sects of heretics everywhere enter their churches unexpectedly—partly creeping in insidiously, partly breaking in boldly and violently; that the devil stirs up on every side the intellects of proud and fanatical men, who infect the flock of God with most pestilential errors and false dogmas, by which both our bodies and souls are driven headlong into eternal destruction. And they prophesy not vainly: if this business of Satan succeeds, the condition of the Church will be much worse than it ever was before, as Christ teaches us beautifully and clearly in the parable in Luke 11. But they deny that it is so very astonishing that the opinions and sects of fanatical men are accumulated daily, and they adduce eight causes, among which this one is placed second:
“Secondly,” they say, “sects must increase because almost all princes and magistrates neglect their office in this matter, but confirm the insolence of intellects by permitting anyone, according to his own judgment, the license to fabricate any false opinion whatever.” Hence, they say, it has come about that the matter has now reached such a point that many at this time consider it a disgrace and ignominy to oppose false brethren and authors of sects by voice or writings. Indeed, even if some sincere doctors still remain, not yet infected by the poison of fanatical opinions, nevertheless they are feeble, fearful, and of a spirit somewhat too abject to be willing to incur danger for the cause of truth.
Thus they speak—with a true complaint, but an empty and indeed a foolish one. A true one, certainly: for those against whom they assembled their synod have invaded—the Anabaptists, Servetians, Stancarians, Antinomians, Schwenckfeldians, Sacramentarians, Osiandrians, defenders of free will, assertors of works toward salvation, and Adiaphorists. Among them they also placed the Jesuits, by a novel injury, since the Jesuits’ religion is that of the ancient Fathers, not the new opinion of fanatics. They could have named many more of their own, such as the Flacians, Ubiquitarians, and other monsters; still others were afterward added from the Concordian Pandora. Therefore they are divided and vary because individuals depend upon themselves; each man, for himself alone, is authentic concerning his own inspiration of the Spirit.
§6
The complaint is empty because princes and magistrates of non-Catholic men, by either punishing the insolence of fanatical intellects or prohibiting it so that there be no need of punishment, would themselves destroy their own profession. The patriarchs of the Lutherans permitted themselves every license of interpreting the Scriptures; now the princes cry out against their rivals and accuse the magistrates because they do not restrain the fanatics, although the magistrate doubts which men are to be judged fanatics. The accusation is reciprocal: the Sacramentarians and Osiandrians call the Mansfelders not only fanatics, but madmen and lunatics. Yet grant that the Anabaptists, Servetians, Antinomians, and the rest are fanatics, as they truly are: what will the magistrate teach, or what will he forbid? Namely, that no one according to his own judgment should possess the license to fabricate any false opinion whatever. A just command, a most equitable law. But by what standard will the magistrate examine those opinions? For they concern the interpretation of Scripture; it is not for the magistrate to judge what agrees with the mind of Scripture and what is alien to it. Or, if causes of religion also pertain to his tribunal, who will provide magistrates who all agree upon one interpretation? Will the Heidelberg and Tübingen praetors ratify the same opinion? Whatever unsound intellects rave, they boast with great vehemence that it was drawn from the most limpid fountains of Scripture. What will the prince’s office do here? Command another interpretation? But which one? That which is in Luther’s tomes, or in Calvin’s papers? What does a fanatical intellect do here?
I care neither for Calvin nor for great Luther;
Each pleases when true; each lies fallen when false.
And why should I care for him, when he did not care for his predecessors? Let the man impose laws upon me who taught me by his own example that the free power of prophesying—that is, of interpreting the Scriptures—is constrained by no law. Let him restrain me within his own orbit who
Traverses pathless regions of perfidy,
Trodden before by the sole of none.
§7
Therefore this complaint is empty, for those who fabricate novelties do what they learned from their predecessors. Unless they did it, they would not be heretics. And so this complaint is also foolish. For those counselors bore through the ship in which they sail and begin to sink themselves, lest the συμπλέοντες, those who are in the same ship, escape. They too are innovators, and indeed ought especially to be restrained. For what portents will arise, and to what outcome, unless the magistrate opposes them with armed force brought to bear?
They teach in the chapter on good works, from Luther, page 194: “The statement is slippery and vain when one thus declares: Faith indeed ought not to rest upon works and merits, but nevertheless it is necessary to possess good works, as things necessary for salvation. This entire statement is nothing. For if they are necessary for salvation, salvation cannot come without them, and therefore we are not saved by faith alone. But this is false and dissents from all Scripture.” They then proceed to devote labor to monsters: that it is not good when it is said, “Good works are necessary for salvation.” Indeed, they are neither a preserving cause nor a condition without which salvation cannot occur. But if good works are not even a condition without which salvation cannot occur, who doubts that a man may promise salvation to himself and his followers even if they have never conceived any good work? Who does not see that princes, if they love the distinction between good and honorable things in their provinces, must drive away those monsters—not now of intellects but of deliriums?
But I omit these things. Cato was accustomed earnestly to admonish the magistrate to punish offenders severely in the state, perceiving that nothing was more ruinous in the state than license. He thought it so intolerable in a polity that he judged a magistrate who could restrain it but did not do so ought to be stoned. If this maxim ought to possess force anywhere, it seems to possess a place especially in the license of teaching, writing, and painting, since evil things are sometimes taught with greater destruction than they are done. What license effects is shown by so many thousands of errors—and errors most pestilential in the state.
I shall seek an example from a neighboring place. There is a law which prohibits defamatory pamphlets under the penalty of death. So little regard is paid to that law at the Frankfurt fairs that everywhere through the crossroads and ships wicked men fly about as vendors of such pamphlets. And, to pass over the rest in silence, fifteen defamatory pictures were brought to me at the most recent fair—and yet those were not the only ones—in which the reputation of Catholic princes and estates, and indeed of the most august Emperor himself, is traduced. For in them the Pontiff is depicted with a demon, the cardinals with a fool; all the bishops’ ornaments are boiled in a kettle; the Emperor, kings, and princes, prostrate on the ground, adore the Babylonian harlot; the Prince of Parma is brought onto the stage after death; the Belgian Truce is mocked together with the image of the Catholic King; a griffin subdues Aachen, Düren, and Wesel and overturns Mülheim; the Truce dies before its day; the Spaniards and the Archduke are mocked; Spinola rides upon the seven-headed Apocalyptic beast and hangs terrible over the Jülich provinces; a Babylonian tower is built at Cologne; the most serene Duke of Neuburg, prostrate, adores the devil in the Pontiff. Everything capable of producing hatred, envy, and contempt of Catholics is brought forward on various sheets; the name of none but the Hollanders and confederates remains untouched. Condemned sheets publish judgment concerning the Roman Empire and the whole world. No one is immune from abusive sheets because there is now a reward for audacity, abusive speech, and wickedness; license entices, slanderers are purchased for a price, and those men rejoice who prefer to have injured lions with humble poison and to fasten hidden bites upon them, because, if they professed their hatreds and were enemies openly, when defeated by greater power they would lose both vengeance and credibility. Therefore this combative audacity, innovating curiosity, and defaming shamelessness must be bridled if we wish to introduce some semblance of peace—indeed, if we wish to approach a negotiation concerning peace.