On the Life and Missions of Jacobus Andreae for the Reformation of the Lutheran Church, Part I

Ansbach, he summoned M. Georgius Karg, and from the Duchy of Wirtemberg, Jacobus Andreæ, so that with the consent of the Princes and a mission made by them, they might abrogate the Papacy, which Fridericus and Wolfgangus had restored while their parents were absent in exile. That counsel was not entirely without danger, since they all easily perceived that the Catholics would not be lacking in defense of their interests. But because that reformation of churches and monasteries could not happen except under the protection of neighboring Princes, Jacobus opened this whole matter to his Prince, by whom he was instructed, for that purpose, in a private note written to Jacobus, which he was to show the Count, of this general argument: If the Count were thinking of drawing the goods of the ecclesiastical monasteries to himself and converting them to his own use, Jacobus should clearly desist from that deliberation and not participate in such councils, but rather return home immediately. Jacobus immediately carried this note from his Prince to Chancellor Wilhelmus, so that he might reveal it to Count Ludovicus. He also warned Wilhelmus most gravely not to stain his hands with the theft of ecclesiastical goods. Thus indeed Christophorus decided concerning ecclesiastical goods, and thus Jacobus, who posited as a principle: by no law, neither divine nor human, can those save their consciences who confer the goods of the church, once dedicated to God, to their own private uses, whether they be magistrates or subjects. z) That principle is indeed very firm in canon law, from which it was transferred to our sacred affairs. For if it is shameful and alien to all law and reason to seize what belongs to another, it is even more shameful and alien to any religion and conscience to seize those things which belong to God and are dedicated to God. But what are the goods dedicated to God, and whether those who need nothing—neither God nor anything else—can truly be dedicated goods, is not an easy and irrefutable principle of law, since not...

z) These words are explicitly and expressly brought forward by Jacobus in Fama Andrean. refl. p. 49.