The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

VII. Hoe-Redeemed Saints Spend Millennium in Heaven

MATTHIAS HOE VON HOENEGG (1580-1645) of Saxony was born in Vienna and educated at the University of Wittenberg. At twenty-one he became a licentiate in theology and lecturer in the university, and later a Doctor of Theology. In 1602 he was called to the court of Dresden as third chaplain. Because of his manners and ability he soon rose in favor with the elector, and after fulfilling a number of commissions in the provinces he became in 1613 the chief court chaplain in Dresden. To comprehend the situation correctly, we have to understand that at that period the intellectual as well as the spiritual life in Ger many was centered in the courts of the different princes, and lay in the hands of those persons who knew how to influence the princes. These persons were the confessors, the court chaplains, and favorites. Therefore some historians are not far amiss when they contend that the history during that period lay in the hands of two priests: Hoe, court chaplain of John-George of Saxony; and Lammermann, priest-confessor of Ferdinand I. PFF2 611.5

HOE, a stanch Lutheran and violently anticalvinistic, preferred rather to unite with the emperor, which meant with Rome, than with the Calvinistic princes of Germany. His works, Triumphus Calvinisticus (1614) and Prodromus (1618), reveal his spirit. In these works flares up the deep-seated hatred and enmity which separated the two Protestant confessions and illuminated with sinister glow the centennial celebrations and jubilee of a Protestant Germany. A few months later the great drama of the Thirty Years’ War began. Hoe, inducing the elecfor to side with the emperor, became therewith instrumental in bringing about the almost complete annihilation of the Moravian Church and other evangelical bodies in Bohemia and Silesia. In his 99 theses against the Calvinists he is so violent that even the bishop of Cologne (1622) congratulated Saxony on her return to the bosom of the mother church. But in reality that was not the case, because at the same time, for nearly thirty years, Hoe worked on his Commentarius in Apocalypsin ⁵² wherein his theological position toward the Catholic Church is made perfectly clear. Therefore in him we have the strange and sorrowful spectacle that he, although theoretically sound in his views about the Papacy, yet by his violent hatred against his coreligionists helped not only to weaken the Protestant cause but even to wreck it in certain parts of the German Empire and to strengthen the power of Rome. ⁵³ PFF2 612.1

His general positions of interpretation are as follows: PFF2 613.1

Under the first four seals he sets forth the horsemen as the gospel church, persecution, hunger, and death; ⁵⁴ the first four trumpets as heretics; the fifth, the Roman Pope (Antichrist); the sixth, the Turks (the Eastern Antichrist); and the seventh, the overthrow of both Antichrists in the last judgment. ⁵⁵ He also suggests that the “kings of the east,” of the sixth plague, are probably Japan, Persia, and other Asiatic countries who, drunk with the wine of Babylon, will embrace the Papacy, or the “Lamb-Dragon religion,” and receive the three evil spirits from the mouth of the dragon, beast, and false prophet. How this will come about is illustrated by the activities of the Jesuits of the present century. ⁵⁶ The seventh plague, the day of judgment, he avers, will end the Papacy. ⁵⁷ PFF2 613.2

The two beasts of Revelation 13, Hoe states, are “the old Roman Empire” and the papal “Roman Antichrist. ⁵⁸ After discussing many opinions concerning the 1260 days and 42 months, he concludes that the times are indefinite, and known only to God. ⁵⁹ The woman Babylon is Antichristian Rome, the papal see. ⁶⁰ Hoe declares the Alcazar view on the 1,000 years to be “silly,” and interprets this period as beginning with the end of the persecutions at the time of Constantine’s rise to imperial power, and ending about 1300 with the rule of the Papacy on the one hand and of the Turks on the other. ⁶¹ PFF2 613.3