PREFACE

...it is as if they already foresaw that one dispute breeds another, and that "flame is close to smoke," as the saying goes. Why, then, did they want this same Response under the title of the "Bohemian Brethren" to exist among their rank and file and be hidden for a time? And why did they not timely and completely remove it from circulation as would have been fair, especially since they list several reasons in that very document why they do not wish to engage in conflicts with antagonists?

Furthermore, if they did not want to recall to the ecclesiastical theater A metaphor for the public stage of church debate and controversy. things that had been agitated many years ago and were almost laid to rest, why did they allow copies of that same Response to be carried from Bohemia or Moravia into Poland only in recent years, and permit them to be introduced to others there?

This can certainly be judged to have been done for no other purpose or plan than to overturn, in bad faith, those things I wrote for the use of our churches and the defense of our sincere Confession. They sought to attack from behind my back original: "κατὰ νώτου" (kata nōtou) and without my knowledge, undermining me with "underground tunnels" original: "cuniculis"; a military metaphor for subverting or sapping the foundations of a fortification in secret. to persuade the unwary that what I truly reported about them was false and fabricated.

Therefore, although these Elders and Overseers The Latin "Seniores ac Præpositi" refers to the high-ranking administrative and spiritual leaders of the Bohemian Brethren. of the Brethren also wrote in that same Protestation of theirs, among other things, that they often concede the entire argument to me above others—since I cite their formal words and dispute with logical arguments, whether those arguments are approved by everyone or not—nevertheless, since they have nonetheless [given weight] to this Response, which denies most things, [and accuses me] of falsehood...