Preface by D. Martini Luther.
1. This booklet of your false blood and idolatry in the cathedral of Schwerin I have let go out in praise and thanks to the true God and His dear pure Word; but to shame and revenge on the father of all lies, who has so brazenly and shamefully established such and other countless abominable idolatries, and thereby suppressed God's word and destroyed Christ's kingdom, that he well deserves that we, together with all the saints, confidently expose his butt, and put his shame in the public light before all the world, so that he may be paid twofold, as Revelation Cap. 18:6, that is, to be disgraced more and more, just as he has disgraced Christ our Lord without ceasing until now, and has heaped and multiplied one idolatry upon another in his kingdom.
2. And although the papists now receive many such books of their idolatrous abominations and lies, and yet insolently and knowingly, in addition, want to remain willfully hardened and obdurate in their blasphemous, diabolical nature, that it is in vain to consider what we may further and further reproach and punish, implore and admonish them: we must think and do as the prophets did and acted with their people, who were also so stiff-necked and stubborn that God Himself said of them, "Let their neck be iron and their head brass.
1) Walch and the Erlanger: would have to.
The sweat filled the ears of the others and moved their hearts to fear God, even though the stubborn and obstinate remained unrepentant and unreformed. Just as one must confidently preach and cast at the devil, although all blows are lost on him, and he drives the mockery out of all preaching, as Job paints the Behemoth in the 41st chapter, v. 20.
3. So we must not allow ourselves to be mistaken that our papists also have iron necks and brazen heads, and do not ask anything about the fact that they have been publicly and mightily overcome and convinced with the bright truth, but must also beat and throw at them as at steel anvils and demons; and although the blows are lost, it is still to be hoped that the sound and reverberation will fill the ears of some others, and they will be frightened by such a strong angry judgment of God, and learn to fear God. For it is terrible for a kind-hearted person to hear that God strikes hard heads so earnestly and with His great thunderbolts, and yet they despise and mock all this; And one learns from this how terrible it is that God should be so very angry, and not only inflict such abominable idolatry and powerful error on the devil over the godless and ungrateful, but also so completely deliver them into his power that they, hardened and blinded, cannot hear nor suffer the word that he sends to them as a shell, to save them graciously and mercifully from error and the devil's power.
4 Therefore let every Christian read this booklet, and he shall see such divine earnestness and wrath against the ungodly, and let it be an example and a warning to him to beware and flee to the utmost of his ability.
*) In 1222, on his return from the Holy Land, Count Heinrich von Schwerin received from a papal legate a shrine, supposedly a drop of the blood shed by Christ on the cross, but in fact a piece of cinnabar set in a jasper. This shrine was kept in the cathedral at Schwerin and was shown to the people every Friday at a certain hour. It seemed to the onlookers as if the drop of blood separated into three parts, which then reunited. That is why this false sanctuary was worshipped for more than three hundred years under great crowd of people. Against this fraud and idolatry wrote
from such lies and abominations, lest he be made partaker of all such plagues, as it is written [Revelation 18:4], "Come out, come out from Babylon, that ye be not partakers of her sin," and drink not with her of the cup of the fierce wrath of God, for the day of his wrath is come to give her as she hath deserved. May God the Lord strengthen us and keep us in His dear, pure Word through Jesus Christ our Lord, and help us to gratefully acknowledge it and to testify and adorn it with good fruits; to Him be praise and thanksgiving forever and ever, amen.
Against the preachers of lies, who, with lying holy blood and fictitious miracles
Seduce people from God's words, Jer. 23, 30-32.
"Behold, I will to the prophets, saith the Lord, which steal my words one from another. Behold, I will go to the prophets, says
the Lord, who speak and speak their own word, he hath said. Behold, I will speak to them that prophesy false dreams, saith the Lord, and preach the same, and deceive my people with their lies, and loose theidings, when I have not sent them, neither have I commanded them, neither are they of any use to this people, saith the Lord."
From the antichrist holiness and spirit
2 Thess. 2, 9-12.
"His future is* according to the working of the devil, with all manner of lying powers, and signs, and wonders, and with all manner of deceivableness unto unrighteousness, among them that perish; because they have not received the love of the truth, that they might be saved, therefore God will send them strong delusion, that they may believe the lie, that they all may be judged who believe not the truth, but have pleasure in unrighteousness."