The Holy Scripture - english version B.indd - Sabbat

Interpretation in post-Reformation Times.393Rise up, O Luther ! cry out concerning "the Babylonian captivityof the chuRch," burn the Papal bull, rouse Germany ; but you shall haveyour match. Satan shall bring forth his Loyola, and Loyolahis Jesuits - subtle, learned, saintly in garb and name, protean in form,infinite in disguises, innumerable, scholars, teachers, theologians, confessorsof princes, politicians, rhetoricians, casuists ; instruments keen, unscrupulous,double-edged ; men fitted to every sphere and every enterprise - they shall swarmagainst the Church of the Reformation, each one wise in the wisdom and strongin the strength which are not from abouve but from beneath.Rise up, Zwingle, you lion of Zurich ! lead forth your brave Swiss againstthe enemies of liberty and truth ! But you must perish on the field of battle ereyour cause succeed.Ride forth, fair flower of France ! strive, you brave Huguenots, foryour country's freedom and the faith of the gospel [good tidings] ! But Paris shallrun with your blood ; you shall fall like leaves from a tree shaken by tempest ; youshall lie in heaps, like rubbish in the streets ; your bodies shall choke the streams,they shall not rot in rivers, they shall hang in chains, they shall be shovelledinto cemeteries, or buried in dung-heaps. Rome shall ring her joybellsand sing her Te Deums, and fill her cathedrals and palaceswith acclamations because the massacre of St. Bartholomew has overthrown,for a time, the work of the Reformation in France.Stand up, you Hollanders ! stand up, William the Silent ! stand up, youmen of Haarlem and Rotterdam, of Amsterdam and Leyden, you brave burghersand earnest theologians. You dare to contend for civil liberty and sacred truth ;your land shall groan beneath the tread of Alva's troops ; your fortressesshall fall, your citizens shall be thrust through with Spanish swords, yourpossessions shall be plundered, your wives and your daughters shall be dishonoredand foully murdered, your children trampled beneath horse-hoofs, and troddendown like mire in the streets.Break your chains, O England ! Rome shall find means to rivet them again ;you shall have your bloody Mary, and your fires of Smithfield.Protestant bishops shall burn for it ; against your sea-girt isle Spain shall sendher proud armada ; a fleet of on hundred and thirty great ships of war shallcome across the seas, twelve of them named after the twelve apostles ; theyshall be laden with seamen and troops, with swords andguns, with priests and Jesuits ; the pope shall bless thebanners. Woe to you, O ENGLAND, if Heaven help you not, if its windsforsake your cause !Combine yourselves togehter, you Protestant states of Germany ; claimyour rights of conscience ; stand for the truth ; establish your Protestant liberties :but you shall have your desolating war of thirty years ! From Bohemiato the broad waters of the Scheldt, from the banks of the Po to the shores of theBaltic, whole countries shall be devastated, harvests destroyed, cities and villagesreduced to ruins ! half Europe shall be set on fire, and civilization shall be buriedfor a season in bloodshed and barbarism.