Those who pride themselves on a certain blunt directness of speech, and who declare that they always speak their mind, further define the position they take up by declaring that they call a spade a spade. There certainly are occasions when such a course is the only honest one, when a man has to make his protest and refuse to connive at any circumlocution or whittling away of principle. There are other occasions when a regard for the feelings of others makes such a proceeding sheer brutality, and it is, we believe, a well-established fact that the audience of those who pride themselves on speaking their mind ordinarily find that they are the victims of a somewhat unpleasant experience. Baxter declares, "I have a strong natural inclination to speak of every subject just as it is, and to call a spade a spade, so as that the thing spoken of may be fullest known by the words. But I unfeignedly confess that it is faulty because imprudent." "I am plaine," we read in Marprelate's "Epitome," "I must needs call a spade a spade," and Ben Jonson advises to "boldly nominate a spade a spade." In the year 1548 Archbishop Cranmer was busily engaged on a design for the better unity of all the Protestant churches by having one common confession and one body of doctrine drawn out of Holy Writ, to which all could give their assent. Melancthon, amongst others, was consulted by the archbishop, and was very favourable to the idea, but he strongly advised him, if the matter were to be carried to a successful issue, "to avoid all ambiguities of expression, call a spade a spade, and not cast words of dubious meaning before posterity as an apple of discord." Wise and weighty words that never fructified. John Knox, who was not by any means the man to go out of his way to prophesy smooth things or palliate wrong-doing by any euphuism or a prudent turning away of the head, declares, "I have learned to call wickedness by its own terms, and to call a fig a fig and a spade a spade"; while Shakespeare, in his "Coriolanus," goes equally straight to the mark: "We call a nettle but a nettle, and the faults of fools but folly." Erasmus writes: "Ficus ficus, ligonem ligonem vocat" of a certain man. Boileau in like manner writes, "J'appelle un chat un chat"; and Rabelais, "Nous sommes simples gents, puisqu'il plaist à Dieu: et appellons les figues figues, les prunes prunes, et les poires poires."