§ 1. I have shown that the cause for which they are carried with such hatred against the Pontiff and Catholics lies not in us but in the malice of apostates, for in the same manner they attack the ancient martyrs and John the Baptist. Now it is pleasing to examine the particular causes. They allege as many causes as there are articles differing from ours which they defend; but I shall explain them individually hereafter. Let us now examine the things which they censure particularly in the Pontiff. They can be referred to three heads: 1. pride, because he equates himself with God, commands Kings, and usurps a twofold power; 2. lust, because he approves fornication and lives impurely; 3. avarice, because, circumventing all men by frauds, he gathers riches. These are the subjects of all their sermons. Even one Pandocheus can be read—not because he is more learned than the others, but because, wandering as though in a public inn, he has crowded lies together in a sermon—or Vincent Schmuck in his theses. Or, indeed, if variety is pleasing, Simon Stenius the poet, who dispersed throughout the University of Heidelberg a ridiculous, mendacious, wretched poem. At least he gives thanks to the reader, and indeed in the poem with which he concluded his most wretched little verses:
For what remains, my Muse declares herself grateful
For so great an honor from the crown of hearers,
Because it wished, by its presence, to adorn an aged man.
But because all attack the Pontiff from Daniel and Revelation and attempt to establish heresies by the corruption of the Scriptures, I too have undertaken to explain those passages, so that it may be evident to all how far they wander from the truth. In this matter I again, both deservedly and earnestly, protest that they cannot establish their faith from Revelation, since the foremost Lutherans and Calvinists rejected that book, and their successors cannot be more certain than they were. Second, they wrest against the Pontiff, and against all Catholics, the exceedingly obscure prophecies of Daniel and Revelation, understood variously by interpreters; and from the lightest conjectures they condemn them and decree the most atrocious punishments. Pareus—who in the year 1618, as the culmination of all the jubilees, published commentaries on Revelation—confesses: “Many Theologians of greater renown in our age—Luther, Melanchthon, Bucer, Martyr, Calvin, Beza, and others—abstained from the interpretation of Revelation. But this can neither diminish the authority of the book nor prejudice other interpreters. For who knows whether they were deterred by its obscurity, impeded by the mass of their labors, or hindered by lack of time, since they doubted very little concerning the authority of the book?”
Finally he confesses that they produced inventions which possessed little coherence or correspondence with the mind of the Holy Spirit. “From this it has come about that accumulated commentaries upon this book indeed exist, of which none fails to promise new light, while its obscurity has not only not been diminished but has in certain places been enveloped in denser darkness.” Pareus has never said anything truer in these matters; and if he continues thus, he will deserve some pardon for so many lies. It is therefore not just that we should be condemned from things so obscure. But let us examine the matter itself so that we may establish the Ecclesiastical magistracy, without which neither concord nor discipline can stand.