PREFACE

The supporters of their doctrine cannot endure the calculated pretexts and accusations of the Waldensian scouts original: "excursorum"; likely referring to the traveling agents or itinerant preachers of the Bohemian Brethren., much less can or should we endure them, especially since we know that they disagree with our Confession Referring to the Augsburg Confession, the primary confession of faith for the Lutheran Church. on several points of doctrine. Furthermore, those who stubbornly deny the things brought against them could not be more certainly and clearly convicted than by the words and writings of those who were once devoted to them, or who had taught and lived among them. For these were eyewitnesses to the matters under dispute; and of such witnesses, it is rightly said that one is worth more than ten who have only heard by report. original: "plus fidei, quàm auritis decem"; a reference to a proverb from the Roman playwright Plautus, meaning one person who saw something is more credible than ten who only heard about it.

Indeed, I do not see how I could justify it before God and men if I did not openly refute the manifold calumnies, nit-pickings, and fabrications included in the Response and most unjustly heaped upon me. Such things are: That I began to act against the Acts of the Prague Assembly The 1575 Assembly in Prague where various Protestant groups attempted to unite under a single "Bohemian Confession." held in the year 1575, and that I alienated them from the Estates of the Kingdom. Yet, by retaining their own separate Confession and ecclesiastical constitutions (which are the business at hand here, and not political matters), they have separated themselves and continue to separate themselves; concerning this, see Notation 14 and 15 of the Preface. Another accusation is that I have revived in these places the sect of the Ubiquitarian A theological position, mostly held by Lutherans, which teaches that the body of Christ is omnipresent (everywhere at once). doctrine, although...