Assertio orthodoxae doctrinae de duabus naturis Christi, servatoris nostri, opposita blasphemiis & sophismatibus Simonis Budnaei nuper ab ipso in Lituania evulgatis

P R E F A C E.

that the faith of the holy Trinity was first handed down at the Nicene Council, and that the Papal kingdom began under Sylvester Pope Sylvester I, traditionally associated with the Council of Nicaea, and that the dogma of the Trinity was laid down for him as a foundation. But after they were convicted of manifest error and falsehood—having had brought forward not only many passages but even entire books of those fathers who lived some centuries before the Nicene Council and yet handed down the same doctrine clearly and consistently—lest they seem defeated, they began to call everyone who was famous in the church shortly after the age of the Apostles Antichrists. But lest they themselves seem destitute of the patronage of antiquity, they counted almost all the heretics who attacked the true deity of Christ among the assertors of truth and the adversaries of the Antichrist. What madness is this, to reject pious men, many of whom poured out their life and blood for the confession of the true faith, whose opinion is one, the same, and constant, and whose consensus is perpetual? To shake their books from the hands of men, but to praise those who teach different and contrary things in this doctrine—even though more than one thing cannot be true, and besides, they are also convicted of having taught many absurd, false, and impious things concerning other parts of the Christian religion? Furthermore, we do not commend the reading of the ancients such that we wish to confirm the dogmas of faith by their authority, as the Adversaries falsely slander us, but we wish their writings to be read with judgment and examined by the norm of the holy scriptures. For they did not write their own works otherwise, and they do not propose dogmas nakedly, but...