The Catholic Confession

DEDICATION

...this angelic doctrine, drawn from the clear fountains of Scripture, for which support is sought in this writing from the very mouths of its Adversaries themselves. Your Highness abbreviated in text as V. Cels. for Vestra Celsitudo not only embraces this with a sincere heart, but also ensures it is publicly preached and spread throughout your domains—the governance of which was divinely committed to you—by appointing faithful teachers of the Church for that purpose, who follow one another in a kind of perpetual torch-race original: λαμπαδηφορία (lampadēphoria), a Greek term for a relay race; here it symbolizes the unbroken succession of ministerial teaching.

Regarding the administration of justice, Your Highness is no less concerned, distributing law to your subjects with an equal balance, primarily through the work of the Lords Councilors. You have invited them to share in this responsibility, men equipped with solid learning, singular prudence (acquired through long practice of affairs and many years of experience), exceptional authority, and marvelous eloquence—indeed, possessing all the requirements necessary for this sublime office.

Furthermore, Your Highness embraces your subjects with such clemency and such a feeling of fatherly love that you have not hesitated, until now, to ward off hostile injuries from them by placing your own person in the way. Through many years of practice, you have acquired such skill in military matters, and possess such prudence and strength of spirit, that the great King of the Swedes, Goths, and Vandals, GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, the defender of German liberty—to whom long ages have produced no equal, nor shall they produce an equal, and whose glory is bounded by the same limits as the course of the sun—did not hesitate to place Your Highness in charge of the highest affairs and ordered you to be second only to himself in the Army.

And so that I may pass over your other virtues and great merits toward the Commonwealth "with a dry foot" a Latin idiom meaning to pass over a subject quickly or without getting bogged down in detail, Your Highness has won for yourself a never-dying praise among late posterity for this reason alone: that together with the Most Illustrious and Most High Prince and Lord, Lord JOHN PHILIP, Duke of Saxony, Jülich, Cleves, and Berg, etc., my most clement Lord and Prince, etc., you were willing to grant my most humble prayers and hand over the Barony of Rembda and the castle of Apolda, with all their villages, revenues, and annual fruits, to be possessed by the Academy of Jena the University of Jena by hereditary right. Thus, founded and strengthened, gifted and enriched by these goods, the Academy may not only [be protected] from that which...