Concise Church History of the Old and New Testaments

Remembrance to the Reader.

...made by Luther, most writers—even among the Protestants—took the gruesome accusations from the Papist reports original: "Papistischen relationen," referring to historical accounts produced by Roman Catholic authorities.. If one were to assume, however, based on constant practice, that those gentlemen always did an injustice to the witnesses of truth Arnold uses the term "witnesses of truth" to refer to pious individuals or groups who were labeled heretics by the institutional church for seeking a more "primitive" or pure Christianity. and never reported straightforwardly, then strange histories would often emerge that would run completely contrary to the current common report.

In the histories of the conversions of the heathens and other similar points, the same would prove true if one did not unthinkingly gather everything from partisan reporters. I must confess that I have often been startled when I saw how commonly the best people under the Papacy are subjected to such heavy accusations—and indeed by those very authors who intend to maintain a common cause against the Papacy. How thoroughly, however, could the innocence of many be saved and malice put to shame if one proceeded impartially in this matter? But there is no more to be said of it here. Suffice it to say that our church history—as little as other branches of scholarship scholarship: original "erudition," referring to the collective body of academic, scientific, and theological knowledge—has neither reached its full perfection nor is it currently used in the proper way.

For this reason, the author well knows that