A literary interlude ...
 

"But where do they get the notion that the end of the world is near?"

"They say it's because men are behaving now just as they did before the Flood overwhelmed them. They feast, drink, stuff themselves, marry and are given in marriage, whore, buy sell, play and charge interest, build buildings. Kings make war, priests are zealous in crease their wealth, theologians invent syllogisms, monks roam through the world, the commons riot, Erasmus writes colloquies. In short, no calamity is lacking: hunger, thirst, robbery, war, plague, sedition, poverty. Doesn't this prove human affairs are at an end?"

CYCLOPS, OR THE GOSPEL BEARER (1529) - Desiderius Erasmus.