Of a Certain Mandate Published by the Prince of Neuburg

Just as an innocent lamb that has escaped the wolf at last falls into the claws of the bear, so it went at this time as well. Some of the defenseless followers of the meek Jesus, no longer daring to trust themselves to the Swiss borders, under the rule of the Zwinglian Reformed, fled here and there, and so also, as it appears, into Bergsland, the dominions of Guliche, and elsewhere, where the Roman Catholic Prince of Neuburg, William Wolfgang, ruled, and where the Anabaptists had lived in peace for many years, under toleration.

But now it came about, about the year 1653, that this same prince, urged on, as it is supposed, by certain envious and spiteful Jesuits, also turned against all those who were called Anabaptists within the bounds of his dominion, so that by a certain public mandate he banished these people, in whatever part of his dominion they lived, though with these conditions:

1. That all Anabaptists who had become such by falling away from the Romish religion must leave without delay.

2. That all other Anabaptists, who had not fallen away from the Romanists, but had come out of themselves, must leave within half a year, if they owned no real estate.

3. That all Anabaptists in the same condition who owned real estate, and were engaged in an established mercantile business, should be granted for their removal, so that they might first save their property, two years, and so on. All this was accompanied by certain threats.

This was carried out by his order, and published without any delay in every place of his dominion where it is customary to make proclamation; at Glabbeeck, however, in the country of Guliche (from where we have received information about this matter), it was done on the last day of January in the year 1653.

In the meantime various petitions for the softening of the edict just mentioned were delivered to the prince, and to these, as it appears, he would to some extent have been inclined; but before this was done he departed from this world, and so what had already been published remained in force under his successor.

So the people just mentioned had to leave those parts, and everyone had to look out where he might best go. In this the Lord God showed many of them the grace that they were received peacefully and joyfully in the places where they went, especially in the country of Cleves, under the Elector of Brandenburg, and in the Netherlands.

"When they persecute you in this city," says the Lord, "flee into another; for truly I say to you, you will not have gone over the cities of Israel before the Son of man comes." Matthew 10, verse 23.