"For as a citizen who violates the Civil Law for the sake of present utility, destroys that institution in which the perpetual utility of himself and his posterity is bound up; so too a people which violates the Laws of Nature and nations, beats down the bulwark of its own tranquility for future time...."
Hugo Grotius (one generation after Martin Luther), The Law of War and Peace (1625) addressing the subject of lawful relations of the emerging nation states.
