“Thus ye have heard, readers, how many shifts and wiles the prelates have invented to save their ill-got booty. And if it be true, as in Scripture it is foretold, that pride and covetousness are the sure marks of those false prophets which are to come, then boldly conclude these to be as great seducers as any of the latter times. For between this and the judgment day do not look for any arch deceivers who, in spite of reformation, will use more craft or less shame to defend their love of the world and their ambition than these prelates have done. And if ye think that soundness of reason or what force of argument so ever shall bring them to an ingenuous silence, ye think that which shall never be. But if ye take that course which Erasmus was wont to say Luther took against the pope and monks: if ye denounce war against their riches and their bellies, ye shall soon discern that turban of pride which they wear upon their heads to be no helmet of salvation, but the mere metal and hornwork of papal jurisdiction; and that they have also this gift, like a certain kind of some that are possessed, to have their voice in their bellies, which, being well drained and taken down, their great oracle, which is only there, will soon be dumb, and the divine right of episcopacy forthwith expiring will put us no more to trouble with tedious antiquities and disputes.” And this is “a very little, only a very little, inferior,” to the “Hydriotaphia”! On page 652, Swift’s style, that perfection of simple, unadorned _sermo pedestris_--is described as marked by “volcanic magnificence.” On page 300 Hooker is described as “having an unnecessary fear of vivid and vernacular expression.” Vivid and vernacular expression is, next to its stateliness, the distinguishing characteristic of Hooker’s style. It would be interesting to know what is meant by the remark on page 445 that Barrow’s style is “less severe than South’s.” Another example of the same thing is the assertion on page 517 that Joseph Glanville is one of “the chief exponents of the gorgeous style in the seventeenth century.” Very ‘gorgeous’ the style of the _Vanity of Dogmatizing_, of its later edition the _Scepsis Scientifica_, of the _Sadducismus Triumphatus_, of the _Lux Orientalis_, and of the Essays!