Part I Protheoria: Formula of Discord — Frederick III, Predestination ulcer, hardening causes

through Germany — so far that they rose even against the best and most pious Princes: as when a fierce tempest was stirred against Frederick III of the Palatinate, with Jakob Andreae, Heshusius, and Bidenbach as chief firebrands, that they might shut pious Frederick out of the Peace of Religion and the Society of the Augsburg Confession — though they would fail at the Augsburg Diet of 1566. At last the Formula of Concord finished the work — first the Torgau Formula, afterward the Bergen — of which we have just spoken: in truth a Formula of Discord, and the complement of a lasting Schism. Elector Ludwig of the Palatinate protested at once, though most devoted to the Lutherans, and other Princes with him, and also the weightiest Theologians — Hospinian, Alting, and the rest already praised at length. But the unhappy Controversy concerning Predestination and its annexed Heads, born chiefly through Samuel Huber and then through Aegidius Hunnius of Wittenberg around the year 1580 — or so Georg Calixtus testifies below on the Confession of Thorn, p. 14 — drew the ulcer wider and rendered it incurable.

And at last they have hardened that Evangelical dissent down to this very day: Satan's malign craft; the hidden arts of the many-scheming Jesuits; the calculations of Politicians serving Rome or their own advantage; and among Theologians for the most part a spiteful rivalry (κακοζηλία), pride, hatreds, calumnies, prejudices, eristic and virulent writings, and private ambitions in very many cases — as it happens — and it will have no end until, by the authority of the Most Serene Princes and by a greater force if one ever intervenes, they are coerced.