I cannot fail to recall the optimistic mood which I and many others felt when we considered the condition of the Reformed churches in 1591. In France there ruled the valiant King Henri IV, in England the mighty Queen Elizabeth, in Scotland the learned King James, in the Palatinate the bold hero John Casmir, in Saxony the courageous and powerful elector Christian I, in Hesse the clever and prudent Landgrave William, who were all inclined to the Reformed Religion. In the Netherlands everything went as Prince Maurice of Orange wished, when he took Breda, Zutphen, Hulst, and Nijmegen. But what entered our heads? We imagined that aureum seculum, a golden age, had dawned. But this was folly, for within twelve months the elector of Saxony, the Count Palatine, and the Landgrave of Hesse all died, King Henri of France deserted the true faith, and all our golden hopes went up in smoke. Since then God has marvelously protected and preserved the churches in France and Germany, so that we have learned from this that all the trust that one places in the most courageous, the richest, were the most skilled princes is fruitless and foolish, because the honor of preserving churches is due not to this world, but to heaven; not to men, but to the Lord God.
Abraham Scultetus, Die Selbstbiographie des Heidelberger Theologen und Hofpredigers Abraham Scultetus (1566–1624), ed. G. A. Benrath (Karlsruhe, 1966), 30–31. Quoted and translated by Henry J. Cohn, “The Territorial Princes in Germany’s Second Reformation, 1559–1622” in International Calvinism 1541–1715, ed. Menna Prestwich (Clarendon Press, 1985), 135 (HT: Matthew McDaniel).
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