The money is verie plesant quhen they ressave it; bot putting hand to thair purse, quhen they vald by thair denner, thay find nathing but uther {328} stane or stick.” Hamilton’s Catholik and Facile Traictise, fol. 50, b. Paris, 1581. Laing, in his Life of Calvin, (of which Senebier has justly said “that it would be impossible to believe that such a libel had been written, if it were not to be seen in print,”) has raked together all the base aspersions which had been cast upon that reformer, and has spent a number of pages in endeavouring to show that he was guilty of stealing a sum of money. De Vita Hæret. fol. 76, b.‒79, b. Of Buchanan, whom he calls “homo sacrarum literarum imperitissimus, simulque impudentissimus,” he relates a number of impieties, of which this is the last, “plurimi etiam narrant illum miserrimum hominem quandam in sacro fonte, quo infantes aqua benedicta ablui solent, adsit reverentia dictis, oletum fecisse.” Ibid. fol. 40, a. One example more, and I have done. “Te admonerem de quodam impio hæretico sacerdote Davidson, quem audivi his jam multis annis publice cum quadam meretrice scortatum esse, quam fertur peperisse prima nocte, qua cum illa dormivit, quod hic doctores medici pro magno miraculo habent; cum vix mulieres ante nonum mensem, vel octavum parere soleant.” Ibid. fol. 36, b, 37, a. Persons must have had their foreheads, as well as their consciences, “seared with a hot iron,” before they could publish such things to the world as facts. Yet Laing’s book was approved, and declared worthy of publication, by two doctors of the university of Paris. Its grossest slanders against the Scottish reformers were literally copied, and circulated through the continent as undoubted truths, by Reginaldus, Spondanus, Julius Breigerus, and many other foreign popish authors. Each of these added some fabrication of his own; and one of them is so ridiculously ignorant as to rail against our Reformer by the name of Noptz. Bayle, Dictionnaire, art. Knox, Note G. Archibald Hamilton’s two works had the same respectable recommendations with Laing’s book, and one of them is declared to be “very orthodox, and worthy of being ushered into the light for the profit of the church.” And John Hamilton was chosen tutor to two cardinals, appointed professor of philosophy in the Royal College of Navarre, elected, by the students of the German nation in Paris, to the cure of the parish of St Cosmus and Damian, presented to it by the university, and {329} confirmed in it by the parliament; and, in fine, was chosen rector of the university of Paris!!! So eager were foreigners to load with honours the most bigoted and fanatical of our popish refugees. Sketch of the Life of John Hamilton, p. 2, 3, written by Lord Hailes.