As was only to be expected, the publication of the above pamphlets brought Winstanley into disrepute with the orthodox Ministers of the Church, who accused him of denying God, Christ, Scripture, and the Ordinances of God. This accusation gave rise to Winstanley's next pamphlet, of some 77 well-printed duodecimo pages, the preface to which is dated October 16th, 1648, and which bears the significant title--_Truth lifting its Head above Scandals_.[62:1] In this volume Winstanley indignantly denies such a charge, and makes use of the opportunity to restate his views even more clearly than he had previously done. The book opens with a dedicatory letter addressed "To the Scholars of Oxford and Cambridge, and to all that call themselves Ministers of the Gospel in City or Country," in which he carries the war into his enemy's camp in a forcible and masterly manner. He reminds them that they are not the only ones who have the right to judge of the meaning of the Scriptures, "For the people, having the Scriptures, may judge by them as well as you." He then continues: "If you say, 'No, the people cannot judge, because they know not the original:' I answer, Neither do you know the original. Though by your learning you may be able to translate a writing out of Hebrew or Greek into our mother-tongue, English, but to say this is the original Scripture you cannot: for those very copies which the Prophets and Apostles writ are not to be seen in your Universities." He forces home his argument in the following words: "You say you have the just copies of their writings. You do not know that but as your Fathers have told you, which may be as well false as true, if you have no other better ground than tradition. You say that the interpretation of Scripture into our mother tongue is according to the mind of the _spirit_. You cannot tell that neither, unless you are able to say that those who did interpret those writings have had the same testimony of spirit as the pen-men of Scripture had. For it is the spirit within that must prove these copies to be true." He then turns the tables by accusing them of being "the very men that do deny God, Scriptures, and the Ordinances of God; and that turn the truths of the Spirit into a lie, by leaving the letter, and walking in their own inferences"; and also "by holding forth spiritual things by the imagination of the flesh, and not by the law and testimony of the Spirit within." And he contends that, in truth, he and his fellows are "those men that do advance God, Christ, Scriptures, and Ordinances in the spirituality of them." In the opening chapter of the book itself, Winstanley, with more than his usual directness, plunges into the heart of his subject in the following suggestive words: