the landgraves of Hesse, the commonwealth of the Helvetians and Rhaetians, and the free cities, as Argentine, Basil, Frankfort, Ulm, Augusta, and Nuremberg; do all, I say, abide in the same authority and estate wherein they have been heretofore, or rather in a much better, for that by means of the Gospel they have their people more obedient unto them.  Let them go, I pray you, into those places where at this present through God’s goodness the Gospel is taught.  Where is there more majesty?  Where is there less arrogancy and tyranny?  Where be the prince more honoured?  Where is the people less unruly?  Where hath there at any time the commonwealth or the Church been in more quiet?  Perhaps ye will say, from the first beginning of this doctrine the common sort everywhere began to rage and to rise throughout Germany.  Allow it were so, yet Martin Luther, the publisher and setter forward of this doctrine, did write marvellous vehemently and sharply against them, and reclaimed them, home to peace and obedience.

But whereas it is wont sometime to be objected by persons wanting skill touching the Helvetians’ change of state, and killing of Leopoldus the Duke of Austria, and restoring by force their country to liberty, that was done, as appeareth plainly by all stories, for two hundred and threescore years past or above, under Boniface the Eighth, when the authority of the “Bishop of Rome” was in greatest jollity; about two hundred years before Huldericus Zuinglius either began to teach the Gospel, or yet was born:  and ever since that time they have had all things still and quiet, not only from foreign enemies, but also from civil dissension.  And if it were a sin in the Helvetians to deliver their own country from foreign government, specially when they were so proudly and tyrannously oppressed, yet to burden us with other men’s faults, or them with the faults of their forefathers, is against all right and reason.

But O immortal God! and will the Bishop of Rome accuse us of treason?  Will he teach the people to obey and follow their magistrates? or hath he any regard at all of the majesty of princes?  Why doth he then, as none of the old bishops of Rome heretofore ever did, suffer himself to be called of his flatterers “lord of lords,” as though he would have all kings and princes, who and whatsoever they are, to be his underlings?  Why doth he vaunt himself to be “king of kings,” and to have kingly royalty over his subjects?  Why compelleth he all emperors and princes to swear to him fealty and true obedience?  Why doth he boast that the “emperor’s majesty’s is a thousandfold inferior to him:”  and for this reason specially, because God hath made two lights in heaven, and because heaven and earth were created not at two beginnings, but in one?  Why hath he and his complices (like Anabaptists and Libertines, to the end they might run on more licentiously and carelessly) shaken off the yoke, and exempted themselves from being under a civil power?  Why