The very day on which Russell was executed, the University of Oxford passed their famous decree, condemning formally, as impious and heretical propositions, every principle upon which the constitution of this or any other free country can maintain itself. Nor was this learned body satisfied with stigmatising such principles as contrary to the Holy Scriptures, to the decrees of councils, to the writings of the fathers, to the faith and profession of the primitive church, as destructive of the kingly government, the safety of his majesty's person, the public peace, the laws of nature, and bounds of human society; but after enumerating the several obnoxious propositions, among which was one declaring all civil authority derived from the people; another, asserting a mutual contract, tacit or express, between the king and his subjects; a third, maintaining the lawfulness of changing the succession to the crown; with many others of a like nature, they solemnly decreed all and every of those propositions to be not only false and seditious, but impious, and that the books which contained them were fitted to lead to rebellion, murder of princes, and atheism itself. Such are the absurdities which men are not ashamed to utter in order to cast odious imputations upon their adversaries; and such the manner in which churchmen will abuse, when it suits their policy, the holy name of that religion whose first precept is to love one another, for the purpose of teaching us to hate our neighbours with more than ordinary rancour. If _Much Ado about Nothing_ had been published in those days, the town-clerk's declaration, that receiving a thousand ducats for accusing the Lady Hero wrongfully, was flat burglary, might be supposed to be a satire upon this decree; yet Shakespeare, well as he knew human nature, not only as to its general course, but in all its eccentric deviations, could never dream that, in the persons of Dogberry, Verges, and their followers, he was representing the vice-chancellors and doctors of our learned university.