Dr. Livesey told Bones that he was a dirty scamp, and warned him if he did anything like that again, he would be run out of the district. "For," said the Doctor, "I am not only a physician, but a magistrate, too." Often when the report of a speech in the third person is ambiguous, we must resort to this device of direct quotation. Usually, however, the question is merely one of finding nouns to take the place of pronouns. By decreasing the number of pronouns, the confused sentence, "Walters and Foster didn't agree with them, but thought as we did, and so they were forced to give up their intention," becomes the clear one, "Walters and Foster didn't agree with their old-time adversaries, but agreed with us, and so the latter were forced to give up their intention." In getting rid of ambiguous pronouns it may be necessary to repeat a word. When clearness demands it, the best writers are never afraid to use a word twice. The repetition may, by serving as a sort of echo of the previous thought, even increase the coherence. So Mr. Bryce writes: "Yet, after all, it (the influence of the Speaker of the House of Representatives) is power, power which in the hands of a capable and ambitious man becomes so far-reaching that it is no exaggeration to call him the second, if not the first political figure in the United States."--(Bryce: American Commonwealth.) This device of repetition is used in transforming the incoherent sentence below into a coherent one. _Incoherent:_ This policy is not the best one; it is false, and we know it, and shun it accordingly, even if it is not to our interest. _Coherent:_ This policy is not the best policy; it is false, we know it to be false, and though shunning it is not to our interest, shun it we do. (Composition and Rhetoric for Schools. Herrick and Damon, p. 304-5.) PART V. The Apostatic[A] Period. LESSON XXXI. (Scripture Reading Exercise.) ELEMENTS OF APOSTACY IN THE CHURCH. ANALYSIS. I. Characters of the Early Christians. II. Controversy and dissentions among the Apostles and Elders. III. Schisms--Defections--and Church wide Demoralization among the Saints. REFERENCES. The Student will find a Treatise upon the subject of Apostasy in the Writer's "Outlines of Ecclesiastical History" as also in his "New Witness for God," Vol. I, as well as in the notes that follow. [Footnote A: "Apostatic: Pertaining to an apostate or apostasy."--Dictionary.] NOTES.