ABSTRACT
IN particular the princes of the northern lands will need to feel no less contrition because, contemptuous of their ancestors’ peaceable instructions and pious customs, they have allowed teachers of error to come in and gratify their ears. These creatures so passionately adhere to and approve their own wisdom that they think no truth or reason of Scripture can, or ought to be, valued, received, or handed down to be read as doctrine if it has not been given allowance by the sacrilegious innovators, whose ideas are so much at variance that not even in one city, house, or tiny cell are they able to hold the same opinions. The cause of this delusion is ignorance or perversion of the Scriptures and the hatred with which these prejudices are borne against sensible people, who conformably acknowledge the true religion with its teaching in all places; for, as Lactantius stresses, no religion should be undertaken without practical wisdom, nor any practical wisdom be found acceptable without religion. 1 So the noblest persons have attained the truth and have held fast to it, while some, deluded by false notions resulting from an embellished interpretation of it, have gone backwards and later, falling into abysmal error, have assailed recognized truth and dragged the whole unity of believers in Christ to the utmost pitch of dissension, under which the persecuted daily sigh; as if the saying were not true which goes: ‘When one buildeth, and another pulleth down, there will be very small profit.’ 2 Then let judicious princes and magnanimous dukes consider how very perplexing it is, how farcical, if the leaders of an army are at odds with one another, promoting victory for someone other than their own monarch.
