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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 May 2022
Grace and peace to the ministers of the churches in Lithuania!
The sacred Scriptures certainly include possession by the furthest northern lands. While the family of priests alone limited them, the people were in the meantime banished from them. They cry again and again that the rites will be polluted, that the mysteries will be profaned, and that a great window would be opened for public and domestic sedition if they allowed the people to be admitted [to the Scriptures]. For these men, it is a stipulation that noone may be introduced into the holy place of the apostles and prophets speaking the vernacular tongue. But this harm is unbearable. Noone can keep the people away from Holy Communion, from which noone can be absent without detriment to their soul and their eternal life; what, I ask, could be more unjust? What is more of a participation in the sacred for us, what is more necessary for the people, than heavenly doctrine? For this alone prescribes and shows equally to all the sure high road and way of eternal salvation.
Since God demands from us that the people, as much as the nobility, has a need for heavenly doctrine (which we are able to fulfill), he teaches and shows us what should be the consequent causes of eternal salvation, etc. Therefore the barque of doctrine excludes no-one, and is not rightly shut off by a private fence within. The common and public good is the possession of eternal life. Who can deny this? Our God wants all to be saved. Why is Scripture not considered, by this same agreement (as I have said), to be a privilege by possession or by contract, and a common and public good? Wherefore, o nobles, admit the people! And admit them to those rites which are proper for them, and certainly in common with you. I do not speak of the more abstruse controversies of religion; in order that these are not presented for judgment to the promiscuous multitude, the Catechism can and must be taught. This is our work for them, and for their conscience: to publish a confession of their faith, so that they may be rightly and truly consoled in dangers, afflictions, and in the agony of death, and to establish the faith of Christ the Saviour.
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