The Preface to the Reader.

...unto us, so that we may rightly understand and serve one another in love. We pray that the great Babylonian building original: "Babylonish building" — a reference to the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11), symbolizing human confusion and the prideful attempt to reach heaven through human effort. of our own tottering imaginations and reckless opinions may fall. These are the structures we have tried to build up for ourselves through the clever inventions and flattering interpretations original: "glozing glosses" — deceptive or overly smooth explanations that hide the truth. of our own empty, plotting reason—making many various guesses about how God should be worshipped and served. We hope this falls so that we may all come to speak the one holy language of Christian love to each other. Until now, we have been so divided that, instead of building each other up in the holy faith of Christ, we have bruised, battered, and beaten each other down in the spiritual pride and hypocrisy of Antichrist.

☛ There are some who are so preoccupied with a strong conceit of their own "enlightenment" and a love for their own self-will that they reject anything that does not carry the stamp and signature of their approved patrons, schools, and institutions. To them, such things are nothing but darkness and nifling original: "nifling" — insignificant, trifling, or worthless. shadows. They are so possessed by groundless prejudice, nitpicking original: "cavilling" superstition, and empty suspicion that they reject such writings as not even worth reading. They imagine original: "weening" that they have a correctly orthodox judgment, perfected in all points of philosophy and theology original: "Divinity". But these people cannot see how much they resemble the blind, self-important Scribes and Pharisees—those prideful, self-styled wise men original: "Luciferian wiselings" who thought no one could teach them anything because they were skilled in the literal text original: "the Letter" of the Scripture. But Christ told them that—