On the Restraint of the First Electors of Saxony in Adopting and Establishing Luther's Doctrine, Volume 2

advantages. In the last place, those things which will be brought forward concerning the transfer of ecclesiastical goods into profane use, I will diminish with CYPRIANUS, and especially CONRINGIUS, in his Animadversions on the Bull of the Pontiff against the Peace of Westphalia. When these things have been debated, it will be clearer than the light itself that the whole matter is to be ascribed more to a conscience truly stirred by the divine, than to I know not what lust for advantages. You have the stronger points of the following commentaries, which, if God wills, I will expand with as much care as can be done in the near future. Nevertheless, I will not bring forward all the reasons by which I might create faith in my opinion, but the chief ones. I will speak in such a way that more things can still be added and said.

XIII

For the rest, the benevolent reader will grant pardon that in these commentaries he finds only those things which prepare for the present proposal, which set forth the history of the question to be debated, which commend the reasoning of the project, and which announce the sum of the following dissertations. For I have seen that the point which now falls into dispute can scarcely be treated according to its dignity unless certain things have been postulated and fortified by me in a general way for the sake of order and doctrine, from where one may go on to treat the matter itself by a more convenient path.