John, the evangelist and apostle of Christ, was shown many pictures and visions in the Spirit of the state of the churches of God in the New Testament, how they experienced great tribulation and persecution from all kinds of tyrants and heretics, and especially from the two antichrists, but were to be mightily comforted by the revelation of the Holy Gospel and the fall of the Antichrist.
Among others, he saw seven angels clothed in pure linen and girded with golden girdles on their breasts, who poured out the vials of God's wrath on the earth, for one of them, the sixth angel in number, poured out his vial on the great river Euphrates, from which it dried up and the way was prepared for the kings from the going out of the sun.
According to this John saw three unclean spirits like frogs coming out of the mouth of the dragon, the beast and the false prophet, whom the evangelist calls the spirits of devils, who perform signs and go out to the kings of the earth and to the whole world to gather them into battle for that great day of God the Almighty. As it is written in the book of Revelation on the 16th.
The meaning of this vision will not now require much research or discussion, as the fulfillment is now in the day and the work speaks for all the world itself. For after the great Babel of the Roman Antichrist had stood for a long time in prosperity and stretched his head out over all the kingdoms, power and goods of all Christendom, God, out of but grace and causeless goodness and mercy, raised up in the last times a preaching angel [Rev. 14:6], the noble and worthy man Dr. Martinum Lutherum, who out of divine zeal, with great earnestness and strong emphasis, greater than eighty years ago, the Pope's indulgences, simony and drudgery, through which the new Babel, no less than the old, on the ship-rich waters of the Euphrates of all the world's goods, were brought, as it were, burden by burden from all lands, this Luther by and with God's Word, so hindered and brought down such in Germany and many other lands and kingdoms, and the supply escaped him, also otherwise the Roman Babel has noticeably fallen and destroyed.
But the seven-headed crowned beast, who received from the infernal dragon his power, his throne and great authority to avenge this damage, has given forth from his mouth unclean spirits, like frogs, which are spirits of devils, namely the perverse sophists, inquisitors and heretic masters, ambassadors and advocates of the Roman See, all kinds of orders and races. But especially notable are the Jesuit rabble, who spread into all countries and enlist kings, princes and potentates to embitter them with terrible lies and diabolical blasphemies against the Gospel, also with a false semblance of their own holiness and vaunted signs (of whose clientele there is no closer to recovery than from the new India) they
and with their frog cries proclaim and reflect the apostolic truth as the worst heresy and doctrine of the devil in writing and orally for all the world, as their poisonously innumerable books sufficiently testify, especially Censura Coloniensis, Harmonia Andreae Fabricii Leodii, and the falsely named Francisci Burchardi Antonomia, and what such Jebusite fruits and poems are more, as well as the manifold and rapid practices that have been carried out in many places by Jebusite bloodhounds for the promotion and introduction of the Spanish Inquisition, examples of which, if they were to be narrated and introduced from the beginning of the re-revealed light of the Holy Gospel, would probably fill quite a few large books.
And indeed, as far as the knightly heroic deeds (according to their Livonian beginning and origin) of the Jesuit Order in particular are concerned, as incitements of the countries, incitements against the Protestants or, since one does not want to dance to their tune, with foundations of mayhem and murder against royal and princely persons, etc., these are to be found from the glorious testimonies and proclamations that these honorable societies of France, England, Sweden, Transylvania and other places. These are to be documented from the splendid testimonies and proclamations obtained by these honest societies in France, England, Sweden, Transylvania and other places, in masses issued to them together with the passports (to be reported with leave) in open print, also several oaths to honor their beautiful deeds, and erected in perpetuam rerum praeclare, scilicet, gestarum memoriam in publico, from which it can be manfully determined how and why they, as useless, restless and incendiary frogs, have been shown the window of opportunity to seek other ground and to make their cries and spittle in other puddles, which Kühfenster has shown.
But that in many other places this rabble has the best of luck and right, and that in high and low places they enlist rulers to disrupt the good police, and even to ruin the country and the people, enriching their order with finances and the miraculous acquisition of large pensions and incomes, and wants to have the dominion (Dominium) everywhere alone, and in sum so close to home that even their own faithful openly complain of the same arrogance, defiance and sacrilege in open writings, that must be put in its place and ordered by God and the times.
And because without the clay and dung of the falsely named clergy in the land of worldly rulers between the iron toes, the day of final redemption will be awaited with sighing and patience, when the stone without hands will tear itself off the mountain, crush clay and iron, and after the abolition of the earthly dilapidated regimes, establish its eternal kingdom among its elect.
But if it behooves evangelical preachers to discover the Roman Babel and its abominations, to muzzle the antichristian frogs who blaspheme the divine truth of the only saving Gospel with their useless cries, to comfort the oppressed and persecuted who have been greatly distressed by their incitement in the Babylonian prison and tribulation, to teach the weak and misguided and to urge them back onto the right path of truth and to strengthen them in the faith Christianly and well done, as if such things were done differently by faithful teachers in these
lands and elsewhere, since they confidently poured their bowls into the Euphrates of the Roman Babel.
And because the present booklet by the venerable and highly learned Matthiäs Höe, court preacher at the Saxon court in Dresden, has been prepared for this purpose and the most noble articles about which the evangelical churches and their confession are contested and condemned by the Papists, have been correctly and well explained by him and the opponents' false arguments have been clearly refuted, in the end simple-minded Christians who are in danger and would be misled by seductive Jesuit and apostate guides, and misled by seductive Jesuitical and apostolic signposts and would be deceived by something of the truth, to find their way again and to stand firm in the truth of the Gospel, we have certainly accepted his well-meant faithful work, approve it with our consent and testimony (Consens and Testimonio) and wish to commend it to the Christian reader, not doubting that by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ it will not go without special benefit and fruit for the Church of God.
May the Almighty, eternal, merciful God defeat all enemies of the holy Gospel, keep us in His Word and thereby save us eternally for the sake of Jesus Christ, his most beloved and only begotten Son, Amen. Scriptum Lipsiae (Leipzig), September 17. Anno 1603.
Dean, Elder, & Doctors
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