Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/440

 about it, that the plan of these princely enemies has been made without the knowledge, will or commandment of his Imperial Majesty, because they themselves testify that they will not produce the imperial mandate until after their plans have been made; by which we must perceive that their undertaking is neither by human nor divine ordinance, but comes only from an envious, rebellious, wicked source, and they wish to use his Imperial Majesty only as a cloak. All true and good subjects of his Imperial Majesty ought to take ground against them; for they are not discharging a duty to his Imperial Majesty, but his Imperial Majesty is to be the pretext for their wicked undertaking.

In the third place, it is a matter of common knowledge throughout the empire that the decree publidied at Worms* was not concurred in by the Estates of the Empire, but was even protested against by the highest and most important Estates, so that it is to be regarded without doubt as the de- cree of the mob of priests and not of the Emperor or the empire. It was afterwards suspended at Nuremberg,* and at Spires* it was resolved to request that it be suspended by imperial decree as well. Therefore, when the rebellious princes take their stand upon this edict, it is done out of sheer malice and merely as a pretence, the emptiness of which is apparent to all the world. Therefore, any mandate which can be pro- duced, based on this invalid decree, may, beyond all doubt and with a good conscience before God and the world, be held as false and as one that his Imperial Majesty has not issued and cannot and will not issue, and everything that the rebellious princes do on such a pretext is to be regarded as a real rebellion and revolt against his Imperial Majesty. It is not only not to be obeyed, but it is to be resisted every way, be- fore God and the world.

In the fourth place, there remains the right of appeal and protest, which can be entered if necessity demands (which may God forbid!) with every advantage to his Grace and with every disadvantage to the rebellious priests and princes, who

^Tbe Edict of Worms of 1521.


 * At the Second Diet, 1523*

•At the Diet, August 27, 15*6. The "Recess" in Kidd, 185; Smith, aai.

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