PREFACE

(a) 3

...privately, they gave thanks for the sharing of the same referring to the author's earlier writings or drafts mentioned on the previous page.

Therefore, when this little work of mine—at the urging of many, and especially through a certain heroic impulse and at the expense of the Magnificent Lord John Spanoffsky Jan Špánovský z Lisova (c. 1540–1591), a prominent Protestant nobleman in Bohemia, the Elder, of Lisau in Pacov original: "Lyſau in Patzauo"; a town in the Pelhřimov District of the Czech Republic, to whom may it be well forever—had been printed once, rumors were spread everywhere concerning a "Response" prepared by the Bohemian Brethren The Unitas Fratrum, a pre-Reformation Christian denomination in the Kingdom of Bohemia against it. Among others, the author of this response was said to be, on account of his style, a certain Sacramentarian Sacramentarian: a derogatory term used by Lutherans for those (often Calvinists or followers of Zwingli) who denied the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, viewing the bread and wine as mere symbols. This man was not a theologian by profession, but a philosopher, who, as a fugitive from Saxony, had shortly before given his name to the Waldensian society The author refers to the Bohemian Brethren as "Waldensians," a common polemical tactic to link them to an older medieval sect, as he held the same views as they did.

But neither I, nor others devoted to our Confession The Augsburg Confession, the defining document of Lutheranism then living in that same province of Moravia, happened to see anything of the sort that had been set against my book (as far as I know). Furthermore, public rumor later added that it would happen at another time—namely after my death, and when all copies of my little book had already been dispersed—that this Response would be published. This was supposedly planned so that my words would no longer be compared with their response, nor would timely testimony be offered for the truth as it struggled, nor could the various slanders inserted into that same Response be openly countered. At last, after a three-year period and a long consultation by the Waldensian society, which—