Folly -- Early works to 1800; Folly -- Religious aspects -- Christianity
this no very good sound: so that neither baptism, nor the Gospel, nor
Paul, nor Peter, nor St. Jerome, nor St. Augustine, no nor most
Aristotelian Thomas himself can make a man a Christian, without these
bachelors too be pleased to give him his grace. And the like in their
subtlety in judging; for who would think he were no Christian that should
say these two speeches "matula putes" and "matula putet," or "ollae
fervere" and "ollam fervere" were not both good Latin, unless their
wisdoms had taught us the contrary? who had delivered the church from
such mists of error, which yet no one ever met with, had they not come
out with some university seal for it? And are they not most happy while
they do these things?
Then for what concerns hell, how exactly they describe everything, as if
they had been conversant in that commonwealth most part of their time!
Again, how do they frame in their fancy new orbs, adding to those we have
already an eighth! a goodly one, no doubt, and spacious enough, lest
perhaps their happy souls might lack room to walk in, entertain their
friends, and now and then play at football. And with these and a thousand
the like fopperies their heads are so full stuffed and stretched that I
believe Jupiter's brain was not near so big when, being in labor with
Pallas, he was beholding to the midwifery of Vulcan's axe. And therefore
you must not wonder if in their public disputes they are so bound about
the head, lest otherwise perhaps their brains might leap out. Nay, I have
sometimes laughed myself to see them so tower in their own opinion when
they speak most barbarously; and when they humh and hawh so pitifully
that none but one of their own tribe can understand them, they call it
heights which the vulgar can't reach; for they say 'tis beneath the
dignity of divine mysteries to be cramped and tied up to the narrow rules
of grammarians: from whence we may conjecture the great prerogative of
divines, if they only have the privilege of speaking corruptly, in which
yet every cobbler thinks himself concerned for his share. Lastly, they
look upon themselves as somewhat more than men as often as they are
devoutly saluted by the name of "Our Masters," in which they fancy there
lies as much as in the Jews' "Jehovah;" and therefore they reckon it a
crime if "Magister Noster" be written other than in capital letters; and
if anyone should preposterously say "Noster Magister," he has at once
overturned the whole body of divinity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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