More wicked and more abominable is the crime that I
am now prosecuting, that there have been found upstart Doctors
who have made a drunken onslaught on the handwriting that is of
heaven; who have given judgment against it as being in many
places defiled, defective, false, surreptitious; who have
corrected some passages, tampered with others; torn out others;
who have converted every bulwark wherewith it was guarded into
Lutheran "spirits," what I may call phantom ramparts and parted
walls. All this they have done that they might not be utterly
dumbfounded by falling upon Scripture texts contrary to their
errors, texts which they would have found it as hard to get over
as to swallow hot ashes or chew stones. This then has been my
First Reason, a strong and a just one. By revealing the shadowy
and broken powers of the adverse faction, it has certainly given
new courage to a Christian man, not unversed in these studies, to
fight for the Letters Patent of the Eternal King against the
remnant of a routed foe.
SECOND REASON
THE SENSE OF HOLY WRIT
Another thing to incite me to the encounter, and to disparage in
my eyes the poor forces of the enemy, is the habit of mind which
they continually display in their exposition of the Scriptures,
full of deceit, void of wisdom.
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