I entreat you, German parents, permit not one of your sons to enter this grave of moral freedom and independence; you draw upon yourselves a heavier weight of blame than if you took their lives—for the moral death is worse and more painful than that of the body! German mothers preferred in former times to put their children to death, rather than that they should be Roman slaves; while now-a-days it is esteemed the highest honour which can be conferred upon a German youth, that he should become the slave—the consecrated slave, forsooth—of the Roman bishop! But the yoke is not acknowledged, for it is imposed under the holy name of religion.

And you, my youthful friends, who choose for yourselves the profession of teachers, let me conjure you to retire from this grave of moral strength, and independence—from the seminary! You will be losers there in mind and body, were you even giants in both! You will become slaves! You will become hypocrites! Attractive though the office of a teacher be, and enlarged his sphere of working, it is rendered a dangerous one for manly dignity—for truth and freedom, by the disgraceful ignominious fetters imposed on it by Rome. Choose, therefore, rather a hard couch and a laborious life than the degrading indolence of a polluted existence.