Most excellent, illustrious, reverend men, most learned and congenial colleagues, most honourable companions in study, most esteemed listeners of every rank!

The most venerable Senate has instructed me to comment on the occasion and cause of the celebration with which the King has authorised this university to mark today's festival. Since that immortal act which we now commemorate concerned the profession and establishment of religious doctrine, it appears fitting that our admirable Theological Faculty should play the leading part in this festivity. Its estimable Dean will accordingly give us a fitting and learned account of the event in question and profoundly impress its significance upon us. But what happened at Augsburg was not enacted by an assembly of Doctors of Theology and leaders of the Church; nor did they embark on a learned disputation in order to determine the truth and to require the lay community to accept it as certain and observe it with dutiful obedience. On the contrary, the main significance of that day was that the princes of the [German] states and the burgomasters of the Imperial Cities publicly declared that the Protestant [evangelicam] doctrine, freed at last from a mass of superstitions, errors, lies, and all kinds of injustices and abuses, was now finally perfected and elevated above the uncertain outcome of disputations, above the arbitrary will, and above all worldly authority, and that they [i.e. the princes and burgomasters] had now taken up the cause of religion.