DEDUCTION

Concerning the free

PRACTICE OF RELIGION OF THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION

The Augsburg Confession (1530) is the primary confession of faith for the Lutheran Church and a cornerstone of the Protestant Reformation.

Of the

Land of Silesia.

Printed in the year 1647.

How greatly the Protestant inhabitants of the Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia—especially in the Hereditary Principalities—rejoiced over the desired notice original: Aviso; a formal announcement or report regarding the peace treaties established at Münster and Osnabrück. Under this, they lived in the certain hope that in such a work of pacification original: Pacifications- Wercke; the negotiations leading to the Peace of Westphalia, the Land of Silesia would be so observed that it might remain peacefully in possession of its old privileges and immunities, both in sacred and in secular matters original: tàm in sacris, quàm in prophanis, and especially in the public practice of religion of the Augsburg Confession original: Religions Exercitio Augspurgischer Confession, by virtue of the Imperial Letter of Majesty of Rudolf II issued in 1609, this document granted significant religious freedom to Protestants in Bohemia and Silesia and the Electorate of Saxony Accord.

However, they have found themselves—not without singular heartache—greatly dismayed after learning from the Imperial public decrees original: Publica published through public print, that the Silesian Hereditary Principalities were to remain entirely excluded from their religious freedom. This was under the pretext that the right of religious reform is inherent to territorial law, or sovereignty original: jus reformandi juri territoriali, sive superioritatis cohæriten; this refers to the legal principle of cuius regio, eius religio (whose realm, his religion), which allowed a ruler to dictate the religion of their subjects.

And indeed, the heart-sorrow among so many thousands of pious Christians is so much the greater because, although they are most eager—driven by their extreme spiritual necessity and anxiety of conscience—to take refuge with the Protestant Electors and Princes of the Holy Roman Empire, and to entreat them imploringly to have compassionate mercy on such misery of their conscience and soul, and in...