of the controversy; Bull and his antagonists each claiming patristic witnesses on his own side. Also the doctrine of the saint’s final perseverance, and the limitation of the efficacy of the atonement to the elect, were points asserted by Tully and denied by Bull. Tombes’ book seems to have been of a more discursive kind than the rest; and to have aimed at answering not only the _Harmonia_, but also _Aphorisms_, written by Richard Baxter, whose name we find much mixed up in this controversy;--and by an alliteration very agreeable to the taste of that day, associated with the names of Bull and Bellarmine. Bull’s name is provocative of puns; and we find the author, in his preface to the _Examen Censuræ_, commenting on Tombes in the following manner, which shows the kind of attack to which Tombes had descended:--“He,” says our author, “need not fear the horns and stamping of the Bull (such is his wit, which foreigners will scarcely understand, Englishmen will smile at) since the Bull has long since learnt to despise all such barking animals.”[399] In an age when the amenities of literature were unknown, when Milton and Salmasius were abusing one another with a virulence which astonishes a modern reader, we cannot wonder at finding very bad passions manifested in the field of theological controversy. Bull, doubtless, was a learned and pious man, but his polemical writings show that he was deeply imbued with the violent polemical spirit of the times; yet, violent as may be the spirit of controversy in the modern Church, where can we find anything so fierce, so truly savage, as Tertullian’s attack on Marcion, at the opening of the first Book? [Sidenote: ANGLICANS.--BULL.]