This certainly would have been a mortal offence in a Calvinist or Anabaptist, but for Lutherans the practise had never been so strict.

Moreover, the Prince already repudiated the doctrines of the edicts, and rebelled against the command to administer them within his government.

A general promise, therefore, made by him privately, in the sense of the memorandum drawn up by the Elector, would have been neither hypocritical nor deceitful, but worthy the man who looked over such grovelling heads as Granvelle and Philip on the one side, or Augustus of Saxony on the other, and estimated their religious pretences at exactly what they were worth.

A formal document, however, technically according all these demands made by the Elector, would certainly be regarded by the Spanish government as a very culpable instrument.

The Prince never signed the note, but, as we shall have occasion to state in its proper place, he gave a verbal declaration, favorable to its tenor, but in very vague and brief terms, before a notary, on the day of the marriage.
If the reader be of opinion that too much time has been expended upon the elucidation of this point, he should remember that the character of a great and good man is too precious a possession of history to be lightly abandoned.