THE BOOK WAS DRENCHED - OUDL Home

THE FIRST DEFENCE 25
ranks;—and a clever plan too—that even the most energetic
might weary of marking all the details, and die of boredom
before he could refute them. Yet I did wish to give at least a
sample by way, so to speak, of the present curtain-raiser, and
5 offer on the spot to let my thoughtful readers taste the man at
the beginning, that by trying these hors d'oeuvrcs and antifasti
from a single page we may learn how splendidly he will
entertain us with the rest of his gorgeous dishes: how many
silly puerilities he will prove to have heaped together in his
10 whole work, who has put them so thick—where least seemly
—at its very head and front.
Thenceforward I gladly disregard his much-twaddling
harangues, predestined as they are to wrap up mackerels;
moreover, as far as concerns our affairs, we doubt not that
15 what has been published and proclaimed by authority of
Parliament shall have more weight with all right-minded and
judicious foreigners than the lies and slanders of one brazen
petit-monsieur who has been hired at a price by our exiles,
their country's enemies, and has unhesitatingly scraped to-
20 gether and written down utter lies, whenever anyone to whom
he has leased his pen spreads a bit of malicious gossip, and
gives him his orders.
That all may see clearly how it matters nothing to his conscience
what he writes—true or false, holy or unholy,—I
25 shall have to call no other witness than Salmasius himself. In
his Apparatus contra Primatum Papæ he writes: "The reasons
why the church ought to return from Episcopacy to the
Apostolic institution'' of Elders "are very strong: in Episco-