Most worthy [it is] that [something] be here related concerning the Lutherans and Calvinians, perpetrating so many and so great sacrileges everywhere. The testimony of the Lutheran Chytraeus: “Achan,” he says, “is an image of many Princes and private [men], who filch the Ecclesiastical goods destined for God and for divine uses, and transfer [them] into their own private advantages and conveniences. For [that] which has once been dedicated to God, and to His Church, and to the conservation of doctrine, and to the [purposes] of divine worship, and to the feeding of the poor: that cannot be taken away, and occupied or received by heirs or patrons, without the impiety of [sacrilege upon] the earth, and [without] sacrilege — but ought to be placed for the pious uses of the Church: of studies, of doctrine, of the poor, of schools, of hospitals. And that such thieves and plunderers of Ecclesiastical goods are punished — [a thing] consonant to the divine law and the written laws — with dreadful punishments, present and eternal — not only the present example of Achan, deleted with [his] whole family and all [his] goods, but also daily [examples], running into the eyes of all, of princes and cities, demonstrate — [princes and cities] which, under the pretext of the Gospel [i.e. the Reformation] having occupied the goods of monasteries and colleges, are much more wretched, and draw upon themselves and [their] posterity the malediction of God. For as the feathers of eagles, mixed with the feathers of other birds, are reported to surpass and consume them: so Ecclesiastical goods, mixed with the patrimonies of princes and private [men], consume and dissipate both — experience teaches [it], which even among the Gentiles gave origin to the proverb, ‘the gold of Toulouse.’ And a saying of Chrysostom is worthy of memory (Homily on 1 Cor. 5):
πολλάκις τὰ εἰσενεχθέντα κακῶς ὀλίγα, τὰ καλῶς κείμενα ἐξέβαλε πολλὰ ὄντα. οὐδὲν γὰρ σαθρότερον πλεονεξίας· κἂν τὴν κλεῖν ἐπιθῇς τῷ τοιούτῳ ταμιείῳ, κἂν θύραν, κἂν μοχλόν, εἰ καὶ πάντα ποιεῖς, πλεονεξίαν ἔνδον τὸν χαλεπώτατον λῃστὴν ἀποκλείσας, καὶ πάντα δυνάμενον ἐξενέγκειν.
[Chrysostom: “Often the ill-brought-in few [things] have cast out the well-laid many. For nothing is more rotten than covetousness [pleonexia]: even if thou put the key upon such a storeroom, even a door, even a bolt — even if thou dost all [these things] — [thou hast] shut covetousness inside, the most grievous robber, and [one] able to carry off all.”]
[The Latin rendering:] ‘Often a small profit ill-gotten has overturned ample wealth honorably acquired. For there is nothing which more easily corrupts all [things] than [what is] acquired by avarice and fraud. For even if thou add a bar to such a chest, and fortify it with an outer door and a bolt, yet thou keepest the most violent robber — fraud and avarice — shut up inside, which can carry off and dissipate all.’” Nor indeed could the very parent of all those sacrilegious [men — Luther] himself deny these [things]; nay rather (in the Table Talk [Symposiaca], ch. 4, fol. 596) he proved it by the example of the Aesopic eagle, which, when it had seen roast flesh sacrificed on a certain altar, flew down; with [its] hooked talons carried off a piece, and, swift, flew back into its nest. But to that sacred piece there clung a burning coal, which, gradually seizing the dry material of the nest, kindled the whole of it, and burned up all its chicks. So our eagles of old — now Harpies — swoop upon the Ecclesiastical goods, the chalices, the estates, the tithes, and the houses, [and] snatch whatever they can: they carry [them] into their treasuries, patrimonies, and private hoards. But no advantage [comes] to them thence. Their nests, faculties, and all possessions are burned up: they themselves are reduced to poverty, [their] children must beg: not rarely too all their posterity is cut off, so that often the whole lot of the feudal estates returns to the Church — as may be seen in the castles of nobles and counts, and in other goods. Whence, indeed, have so many estates, villages, and certain towns fallen to the Bishop of Würzburg in these few years? Whence, to the Archbishop of Mainz, such notable counties — the Königstein and the Loßen? “This,” says Luther in the same place, “has been ascertained by experience itself: that those who have drawn Ecclesiastical wealth to themselves have, by that very [act], been reduced to want and beggary.” And, lest anyone could doubt, he praises the testimony of one of the Saxon equestrian nobility, testifying this very [thing] of himself and [those] like himself. This [man] was Burchard Hundt, councillor of the Saxon Elector-Duke John. “We nobles,” he said, “drew the goods of the monasteries into our own noble goods; but now those have devoured and consumed these of ours, so that we now have neither the goods of the monasteries nor of the nobles.” And again, at another time — [something] which is nevertheless written in the same place — the same Luther said: “Ecclesiastical goods are like the feathers of an eagle. Those, if they be joined to other feathers, devour and consume them. So Ecclesiastical goods, by right and by wrong joined to other goods, bring ruin to them, so that at the last nothing at all of the residue remains to the sacrilegious [man].” I praise in Luther so rich and copious a testification of the truth. But I greatly disapprove and condemn [the fact] that he himself was the chief exhorter and master to rapines, robberies, and sacrileges of this kind: and [that] he then at last sent forth those querulous and truthful voices [only] when he had seen [that], from those Ecclesiastical goods sacrilegiously taken away, far less returned to himself and his Preachers than he desired and wished. As I showed from his words in [my] little book On the Priests of Joshua, no. 66. And truly, while his insane dogmas flourish, sacrileges too will flourish; and wretched mortals will attend more to [that] which they have learned to be lawful for them through him, than to his subsequent complaints and palinodes. So that in the Diet of Regensburg of this very year — 1603 — in which I write these [things] again, that single cause of the plunderers of the monasteries has hindered good [men] very much, and would have introduced the greatest perturbation of the public and most sacred justice in the empire, unless — as hitherto — the prudence and vigilant care of the Emperor, and of the princes defending his authority, should watch. Zwick, at Constance, concerning the men of his sect, wrote to Calvin (in the year of the Lord 1541), as is read in this [man’s] Epistles (p. 34): “A great part of ours believe [that] they have then only truly escaped the kingdom of Antichrist, if they may sport with the goods of the Church at [their] pleasure, and be subject to no discipline.” Most true.