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It was only the struggle that lay before him which revealed in the dry and subtle schoolman the founder of our later English prose, a master of popular invective, of irony, of persuasion, a dexterous politician, an audacious partizan, the organizer of a religious order, the unsparing assailant of abuses, the boldest and most indefatigable of controversialists, the first Reformer who dared, when deserted and alone, to question and deny the creed of the Christendom around him, to break through the tradition of the past, and with his last breath to assert the freedom of religious thought against the dogmas of the Papacy.
"Well, sir," said Brotteaux, "I cannot match your generosity and I am bound to tell you I cannot find in all the works of the Theologians one atom of good sense." At the same time he would repudiate any desire to attack religion, which he deemed indispensable for the nations; he could only wish it had for its ministers philosophers instead of controversialists.
Mohammedan controversialists have urged some very specious and plausible arguments; for example, Deut. xviii. 15-18, promises that the Lord shall raise up unto Israel a prophet from among their brethren. But Israel had no brethren but the sons of Ishmael. There was also promised a prophet like unto Moses; but Deut. xxxiv. declares that "There arose no Prophet in Israel like unto Moses." Mr.
Either they are merely painful, as well as unnecessary to Christians; or if they mean anything, they excuse and foster the habit too common among religious controversialists of invoking the wrath of heaven on their opponents. I argue with neither of the objectors.
The lesser errors, apparently, were not made by Moses, but by another person equally unknown. These controversialists cover the very widest field, and their attacks upon Scripture are varied to the point of wildness.
The pamphleteers were numberless; but the chief of them, on the side of Presbyterianism and Anti-Toleration, were perhaps Prynne, Bastwick, and John Vicars, and, on the side of Independency and Toleration, Henry Burton, John Goodwin, and Hanserd Knollys, If Bibliography were to apply itself to the investigation of the popular English Literature of the latter half of the year 1644 and the first half of the year 1645, it would come upon these, and other controversialists whose names have been long forgotten, writhing together like a twisted knot of serpents, not to be uncoiled except by a distinct enumeration of several scores or hundreds of the most quaintly-entitled pamphlets, in the exact order of their publication, and with an account of the nature of each.
I know all that kind of argument. It is as old as, or older than, Christianity itself. It was used in all sincerity against Jesus by some earnest people of His time. It was used again at the Reformation. It is still used by sacerdotal controversialists, and looks very plausible on the face of it.
Two words are constantly in the mouth of Modernist controversialists in speaking of their opponents.
Ignatius in proof that he himself was a true Catholic, in spite of being separated from Rome, so he triumphantly referred to the Treatise of Vincentius of Lerins upon the "Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus," in proof that the controversialists of Rome were separated in their creed from the apostolical and primitive faith.
Sheffield was the most conspicuous, and probably the most influential, of the controversialists on this side of the question at this period; the interest of the public is shown by his pamphlet passing through six editions in a twelvemonth. He was, however, far from singular in this view.
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