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

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advantages. In the last place, regarding those points which will be brought forward concerning the transfer of ecclesiastical goods to profane use, I shall reduce them, in agreement with CYPRIANUS and especially CONRINGIUS in his Animadversions on the Bull of the Pontiff against the Peace of Westphalia. Once these matters are debated, it will be clearer than light itself that the entire affair 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 weightier moments of the following commentaries, which, God willing, I shall expand in the near future with as much care as possible. Yet, I will set forth not all the reasons by which I might substantiate my opinion, but the principal ones. I will speak in such a way that more may 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 rationale 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 which one may proceed to treat the matter itself by a more convenient path.