ANNOTATION

SECOND, OF GREGORIUS DE VA-

LENTIA OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS, ON THE

UBIQUITARIAN CONTROVERSY, AGAINST JACOB

Schmidelin the Lutheran: whose writing also

against the previous Annotation

is answered.

A decorative initial letter V containing a stylized floral motif.When the divine Aurelius Augustine wished to describe properly how great an evil Satan devises against the Church through the work of heretics, and by what artifice he does so, he applied that verse of David (You shall trample the Lion and the Dragon) to the matter. He says, the Lion rages openly, the Dragon lays traps in secret. The Devil has both force and power. The Lion was raging when the martyrs were killed, but when heretics lay traps, the Dragon is creeping in. Yet the persecution of the Church, whether by the Lion or the Dragon, never ceases, and he is to be feared more when he deceives than when he rages. At that time, he forced Christians to deny Christ; at this time, he teaches Christians to deny Christ. Then he forced; now he teaches. Then he inflicted violence; now he lays snares. He appeared roaring then; now he is slippery and wandering, seeming difficult to grasp. This passage from Augustine, even though it pertains to all heretics, for whom it is common to teach others to deny Christ—as Augustine himself elegantly shows elsewhere—nonetheless, most excellent reader, seems to me to be illustrated and confirmed by the example of Schmidelin in the Ubiquitarian controversy. For I believe that the poisonous works of those heretics, in teaching how to deny Christ plausibly, use the Dragon as their model, since the eventual outcome of this doctrine is that Christ is not believed to have truly come into the world in human flesh, or to have ascended into heaven when departing the world.

Enarrations on Psalms 39 and 90.

Psalm 90.

The various machinations of the demon against the Church.

Sometimes he forces, sometimes he teaches the denial of Christ.

Tractate 6 on the 1st Epistle of John.

Which heretics especially teach the denial of Christ. 1 John 4.