If the people continue stedfast to their religion, they are the rabble, and the only friends I can perceive he allows us. “My good friends the rabble,” in one place, and in another, “our author knows he has all the common people of his side.” What! nothing of honour, or dignity, or wit, or sense, or learning, left of our side? Not so much as a poet, unless it be Robin Wisdom. I pray, sir, when was it that all our friends degenerated into the rabble? Do you think that heresy, as you call it, doth _ipse facto_ degrade all mankind, and turn all orders of men, even the House of Lords itself, to a mere rabble? If all the common people be of our side, we have no reason to be troubled at it. But there is another thing of our side which you like worse, and that is common sense, which is more useful to the world than school divinity. But methinks he should not be angry with the common people, when he takes such pains to prove, “that the kingdom of heaven is not only for the wise and learned,”[87] and that “our Saviour’s disciples were but poor fishermen; and we read but of one of his apostles who was bred up at the feet of Gamaliel, and that poor people have souls to save, as precious in the sight of God as the grim logicians.” Would not any one take this for an apology for the common people, rather than for the Duchess of York, whose wit and understanding put her far beyond the need of such a mean defence? Could she be vindicated in no other manner than by putting her into the rank of the persons of the meanest capacities? But this is another part of the decency of this defence. He had several pretty sayings, as he thought, upon this subject; and therefore out they come, without regarding the reflection implied in them on a person of her capacity, as well as dignity. And so he goes on, in his plea for the ignorant, _i.e._ for the common people, as I am resolved to understand it. “Must they be damned unless they can make a regular approach to heaven in mood and figure? Is there no entering there without a syllogism? or ergoteering it with a _nego, concedo, et distinguo_?”[88] This may pass for wit and eloquence among those I think he pleads for; and so I am content to let it go, for the sake of my friends, the common people. But this is somewhat an unusual way of defending, to plead for those he professes to despise, and in such a manner as to reproach the person he undertakes to defend.