P R E F A C E.

...provide the attentive Reader with sufficient reason to see that we depict the Church rituals Kerkgebaren: religious rites and outward ceremonies of a faith of this false religion merely from our own imagination, like a cloud near the sun, so that the rays of heavenly light from the true religion might fall more powerfully upon the image of my Abraham, to present him in an even more beautiful light. For this reason, no one can or should demand any other proof from me, except that the idolatry of Isis and Osiris Isis and Osiris were the primary deities of the ancient Egyptian pantheon. can be traced back to that ancient time. Some doubt this, along with certain interpreters of Fables The author uses "Fables" to refer to Greek and Roman mythology. who consider Iö, the daughter of Inachus, King of Argos, to be the Egyptian Isis. This proof shall be established for us by those writers and far-famed antiquarians who are listed in our eleventh booklet on page 264.

Moving past this, I do not believe that my depiction of God’s glorious Heavenly Council Hemelraat: the assembly of divine beings or personified attributes surrounding God's throne, also found in the same second book, will lead any sensitive Readers toward a mistaken idea, as a certain Theologian told me he feared; as if the personified representation of every Attribute of the most perfect Supreme Being Opperwezen: a formal title for God, emphasizing His status as the highest entity would instill a concept of divisibility in the Reader, which would contradict His pure Simplicity In historical theology, "Simplicity" (Latin: simplicitas) is the doctrine that God is without parts and is not composed of a variety of elements; He is a single, unified essence....