Item, that Your Majesty should show yourself to be so fatherly, sincere, and impartial that the estates will not regard you with greater suspicion and distrust, so that [you might rather] by these means lessen and extinguish the same.
For if Your Majesty wants to sow and quicken trust and unity among the Estates, you must first lay this cornerstone and foundation: you must give evidence of and create good will and trust among the estates.
As the legitimate authority over both parties, it is Your Majesty’s office to attend – like a good physician – to the welfare and preservation of the whole body politic simultaneously, not offering assistance to one limb while allowing another to wither and die.
[Therefore Maximilian should not take the advice of foreign rulers, which would leave him open to allegations that he favors the Catholics.
Particularly with regard to conditions in the Netherlands, Schwendi recommends cooperation with the Elector and the affected Imperial Circles, which would also strengthen the emperor’s position relative to the king of Spain. The Empire must be protected from Spanish power at all costs.]
And although the king of Spain is a just, pious, and Christian king, who doubtless intends and seeks only what is right and proper toward everyone, he cannot live forever, and one has experienced often enough what the Spanish nation intends and secretly plots. [ . . . ]
But in addition to this, it is just as necessary to be wary of other foreign rulers and practices in the Empire. For what the French, for their part, previously did to harry the Germans in order to bring them into dependence and create factions, and with what duplicity and cunning they acted, is evident from past and current events, and [German] hatred and distrust of the Spanish and others give them particularly good means and opportunities [to achieve these aims].
And for his part, the pope is not slow to pour oil on the fire or to fan the flames among the Germans as he incessantly presses for the execution of [the resolutions of] the Council of Trent and, what is worse, imagines and insists that the Religious Peace was unlawfully established in an un-Christian manner and that one is not obliged to uphold it.
[The Jesuits were being used “as a poisoned instrument” in order to stir up divisions among the Germans still further. The emperor’s desire to resolve the issue of his succession spoke in favor of a policy of agreement, as this required Imperial approval. It also obliged him to a more balanced distribution of offices at court – the Germans wanted a lord “who looked after them and the Empire and want[ed] to be governed in their own and not in the Spanish style.” However, even this was not sufficient. The paths of force and of conciliar negotiation had proven unsuitable to the resolution of religious divisions, and so there remained no other option but “a uniform and complete toleration of both religions that is approved and enforced by the ruling authorities,” and this on the basis of the status quo.]
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