Saturday, July 12, 2008

30 years war source

How violently the restless Jesuits and their followers are exerting themselves to undo, by their absurd interpretations and preposterous attacks, the precious and solemnly ratified Religious Peace [of Augsburg] which was drawn up long years ago for many weighty reasons by his Roman Imperial Majesty and all the estates of the empire, is but too clear. Nay, they would completely abolish it and then do away altogether with our true Christian religion, in which we were born and brought up and in which we would live and die. All this is sufficiently proved by the innumerable, violent, and poisonous books which they issue throughout the Roman Empire, directed against the said Religious Peace and its clear provisions, declaring it to be no more than ad interim,-a temporary concession of toleration, designed to last only until the conclusion of the Council of Trent; even going so far as to imply that his Imperial Majesty of happy memory had no authority to arrange the peace among the estates of the empire without the consent of the pope. Moreover they stir up harsh persecutions hitherto unheard of in the Holy Roman Empire, all with a view to accomplishing their end,- namely, to promote discord among the estates of the Holy Roman Empire, to rouse the several governments against their subjects and vice versa, and to check and suppress our true Christian religion and bring it back into the condition and contempt in which it was before the establishment of the religious and secular peace.
We know, however, that his Roman Imperial Majesty [Rudolf II] and the peace-loving Catholic estates, with their Christian and loyal German feelings, have no pleasure in the dangerous practices of the Jesuits and their adherents. . . . Moreover, since the nature and character of the Jesuits and their followers are as notorious among Catholics as among Protestants, and since what they have been up to in Sweden, Poland, France, the Netherlands, and, recently, in Italy, is well known, they should be estimated accordingly and precautions taken against their dangerous plots.

from

No comments:

This day in history