Question XXIII. How charming an allegory [is] the heretical Gabaonite history!

It is not enough for the Devil, the enemy of truth, to lead men out of the Catholic faith into heresy; but he tries to drive [them] headlong even from one [heresy] into another, and [that] always a worse [one]. Gregory Paul of Brzeziny, therefore — that he may carry over to Antitrinitarian errors those who had hitherto clung to Luther and Zwingli — says [that] those are “Gabaonites” who, although they otherwise make nothing of the Fathers, Councils, and antiquity, yet toss these about [appeal to them] in the article of the Trinity. “Beware,” he says (in Hosius and Rescius, in the Ministromachia), “of the Gabaonites among you, who imposed upon the people of God with torn garments, mouldy bread, etc. Under the name of our God they said they came; and [that] it was imposed upon the people of God by them — the scripture says — because [Joshua] did not consult the mouth of Jehovah. Let not the Fathers, antiquity, [and] Councils impose upon you. For those are old rags, which you [yourselves] first tore in the other articles of faith. Let our one Master be CHRIST: the mouth of Jehovah is to be consulted, not [that] of men.” There are also very many here [who are] Gabaonites, who impose upon us — [who] profess themselves friends, and yet meanwhile desire nothing else than to lead the people back to Egypt in various ways, and by the Augsburg Confession — which the Lord will afterward reveal to you. But just as the Lutherans and Calvinists snatched away all the defenses of antiquity for themselves in the defense of the Most Holy Trinity against the Antitrinitarians, so, most impiously, both those and these glory [boast] that the mouth of the Lord, and the true interpretation of the scriptures, is with them.