§ 1. A great part of the Flaminian Flowers is spent in expounding chapters 13, 17, and 18 of Revelation. For it says that a mouth speaking enormous things was given to the Pope; it attributes to the Pope the mark and the number of the name; it says that the woman is the Roman Church and that the seven mountains are the Roman hills. In sum, all Roman things are abominable. The abusive reviler must be answered, and in this passage too the calumny must be shown to surpass the malignity of every previous age.
§ 2. There are two beasts in Revelation 13: the first seven-headed and ten-horned, the other a two-horned helper and flatterer of the first. I must prove that neither the Ten-Horned Beast is our Emperor nor the Two-Horned Beast the Pontiff.
§ 3. First, the Emperor is not the Ten-Horned Beast. For at Revelation 13:2 it is said, “And the Dragon gave it his strength and his great power,” and, as certain Greek copies add, καὶ τὸν θρόνον αὐτῷ, “and his throne.” But the Dragon—that is, Satan—did not give our Emperor strength, δύναμιν, but the state did, and the most reverend and most serene College of Electors. For even princes of the opposing religion call it the Sacrosanct Roman Empire. Graser indeed asserts that the Church is necessarily afflicted by it and that the fullness of diabolism dwells in it. But with a monstrous malignity of abuse he addresses the Emperor with his proper titles—titles with which even the most serene King of England abundantly refutes him. And a book On the Union and Synod of the Evangelicals, published at Heidelberg in 1614, bears this subscription: “With the grace and privilege of the Vicar of the Holy Roman Empire.” What Aretius says, therefore, is false: “The devil fastened his—
—ornaments upon the Empire.” I conclude my reasoning and leave it to the princes to consider where those words tend.
§ 4. Second, verse 3: “And I saw one of its heads as though slain unto death, and its mortal wound was healed; and the whole earth wondered after the Beast, and they worshiped the Dragon who gave power to the Beast, and they worshiped the Beast, saying, ‘Who is like the Beast?’” These things do not occur in the Empire; therefore the Empire is not that Beast. Yet Aretius says that the head slain in Julius Caesar, Nero, or other Emperors, when they were overcome by the Lombards or the Turk, was restored by Vespasian, Antoninus, or Charles the Great. It is an impious exposition and one which overthrows itself. For the devil is not worshiped in the Empire, nor is the Emperor worshiped because some Caesar died and the Empire was restored. Theodosius the Great, Charles, the Ottos, and others would be held by the same charge.
§ 5. Third, verse 8: “And all who inhabit the earth worshiped it.” But not all worship the Emperor; therefore he is not the Beast. For how many lands and kings both are and always have been free from the Roman scepter? How many arms of the Persians, Goths, Huns, Vandals, Lombards, Normans, Saracens, and Turks have afflicted the Empire? Surely they did not worship what they opposed with such great fury and in part conquered.
§ 6. Fourth, in this whole mode of abuse they disagree shamefully among themselves. Illyricus and others join the Turkish Empire to the Roman; others expound that worship with enormous insult to the princes. Aretius, on Revelation 13:7: “To wonder at the Beast is to wonder at the succession and felicity of the Empire, proclaiming it august, holy, sacrosanct, and immortal.” Aretius proceeds: “Second, they worshiped the Dragon; that is, in its person they worshiped and adore the Devil. For the Dragon is the devil, who fastens his ornaments upon the Empire.” Behold where the hatreds which you have rashly professed drive you. The Pope is Antichrist to you, the second Beast. So that this may seem true to the wretched, you establish that the first Beast, ten times more wicked than the second, is the Roman Empire. You are so shameless and so rash that, although you declare that the second Beast which serves the first must be killed, torn by torments, and burned, you fail to observe that the first is worthy of a greater punishment.
Then you also make your own princes worshipers of the Beast, for in their speech and public documents they call the Empire holy, august, and so forth. He proceeds: “See what it is to worship the devil: that is, to wonder excessively at the majesty and felicity of the Roman Empire.” He professes to treat even of the reformed Empire at verse 8, and in the margin at verse 2 he notes: “The devil is the σύνεργος, co-worker, of the Roman Empire.” Finally, he adds that those who do these things are not written in the Lamb’s book of life. Therefore, O Antibellarmine colleagues, in your judgment are your princes and counts not written in the Lamb’s book of life? Do you exclude all subjects of the Empire from heaven? For they honor the Empire with that title which your colleague in Switzerland—or in a city of the Swiss Confederation—with such zeal and hatred describes as idolatry, that is, worship of the devil.
I ought not to doubt that you think thus, since you assert that there is such great agreement of doctrines among you; moreover, you cannot harm the Pope by any other reasoning unless you pierce him through the flanks of the Roman Empire. Nor is it marvelous or novel that, if only it is permitted to ruin the Pope, you are ready to bore through the ship in which you sail. I know where consistorial violence draws you. These matters belong to another disputation; I now propose one question. The Aphoristic Disputation against Bellarmine was printed at Heidelberg by John Lancellotti, printer to the Academy, and subscribed with these words: “With the privilege of the Vicar of the Holy Roman Empire.” Is this your idolatrous madness, or the printer’s? For to call the Empire holy is, as your men teach, to worship the devil and adore the Dragon. Or perhaps the Roman Empire is holy when it has the Vicar as its head, but profane when it has its primary, proper head bearing its own name—in which, as Graser says, there is the fullness of diabolism?
§ 7. You owe yourselves as an object of mockery not only to Turks and Persians but to Frenchmen, Italians, Spaniards, and Poles when you ascribe your Empire to Satan as its Author. Many of you have labored to show that the translation of the Empire was not effected by the Pontiff, nor its confirmation or coronation, and that it receives no ornaments from the Roman Priest. And why, I beg you? See the monstrous malice, deserving vindication by the laws of both doctrine and the Empire. “The devil,” says Benedict Aretius, your colleague, “fastens his ornaments upon the Empire”; the devil is the σύνεργος, “co-worker, helper,” of the Roman Empire. Was it of such great importance to deny communion with the Pope that the ornaments had to be attributed to the Devil? It is enough—more than enough—that there is hatred of the Apostolic priesthood; now there is love of the daemon. I shudder as I relate it.
So many minds among your writers labored at this, that they might withdraw the Empire from every jurisdiction which antiquity gave to the Pontiff—not so that that majesty might be free and in every manner without law, but so that it might be bound by contract to Satan; so that the Vicar of Christ, the Servant of the servants of God, might be excluded, and that σύνεργος, “co-worker,” and decorator might be the accuser of the brethren, the adversary of Christ, the Daemon. Rome is so hateful that you prefer the diadem to come from Tartarus. At this point, therefore, impiety holds its highest summit. Hatred of the ancient Church has advanced so far that it has enrolled the infernal Dragon in her place and attributes kingdoms to him. What remains except that they believe him when he says, “All the kingdoms of the world are mine,” and promises, “All these things I will give you if, falling down, you worship me”; that in hope of a kingdom they fulfill the condition, fall down, and worship the devil? They will refuse nothing, those for whom to call the Roman Empire holy is to worship the devil, and to call the Empire holy is daemon-worship.
Is it a sin to subscribe one’s book as your pseudo-prophet did:
Anno MatVresCentIs sponsae DIVae?
Again I ask: if it is idolatrous madness to call the Roman Empire august, as Aretius the Calvinist maintains, did Beza bind himself by that crime when he writes that he published his version of the New Testament under the august name of Elizabeth of Britain? Is the name “August” in the August Empire worship of daemons, but in the dominion of a single island ὑποχρεωτικόν, “a binding token,” and a mark of fidelity?
§ 8. Third, I ask whether Caspar Waser, who offered Graser’s Royal Plague for sale to the most serene King of Britain, is guilty of idolatry. For in that preface he says:
The third reason was the authority of Your Majesty, which resides in Your Majesty at the highest degree and is plainly divine, and which long ago likewise resided in your forefathers of immeasurable greatness and splendor, and so forth.
He continues:
Consideration of all these things most justly moved and impelled the author of this work to hang these studies, as it were, upon the altar of the most sacred patronage and most exalted protection of Your Majesty.
Are not the authority of majesty that is plainly divine, immeasurable greatness and splendor, most sacred patronage, and most exalted protection—especially when an altar is added—are not, I say, these so ample words a defense of the German Princes when they call the Roman Empire holy? Pareus, in his book On the Union and Synod of the Evangelicals, calls the most serene Monarch of Great Britain “D. James VI.” If he is Divus, divine, why is the Emperor not Augustus? For that “D.” signifies Divus, not Doctor.
Even a blind man would see where these things tend; would that our Germany may not learn it through its own destruction. All kings are sacrosanct, are honored by their subjects, and are objects of admiration; their injured majesty avenges itself through punishments of rebels. Is it idolatry to call, honor, and admire only the Emperor as sacrosanct? Is this kingdom alone diabolical? What else do these prophets do than hand over wretched Germany, shattered by fraternal warfare, to the servitude and lust of the Muhammadan tyrant?