Having in the precedent lessons maintained the truth of my geometry, and sufficiently made appear that your objections against it are but so many errors of your own, proceeding from misunderstanding of the propositions you have read in Euclid, and other masters of geometry; I leave it to your consideration to whom belong, according to your own sentence, the unhandsome attributes you so often give me upon supposition, that you yourselves are in the right, and I mistaken; and come now to purge myself of those greater accusations which concern my manners. It cannot be expected that there should be much science of any kind in a man that wanteth judgment; nor judgment in a man that knoweth not the manners due to a public disputation in writing; wherein the scope of either party ought to be no other than the examination and manifestation of the truth. For whatsoever is added of contumely, either directly or _scommatically_, is want of charity and uncivil, unless it be done by way of reddition from him that is first provoked to it. I say unless it be by way of reddition; for so was the judgment given by the emperor Vespasian in a quarrel between a senator and a knight of Rome which had given him ill language. For when the knight had proved that the first ill language proceeded from the senator, the emperor acquitted him in these words: “_Maledici senatoribus non oportere; remaledicere, fas et civile esse_.” Nevertheless, now-a-days, uncivil words are commonly and bitterly used by all that write in matter of controversy, especially in divinity, excepting now and then such writers as have been more than ordinarily well bred, and have observed how heinous and hazardous a thing such contumely is amongst some sorts of men, whether that which is said in disgrace be true or false. For evil words by all men of understanding are taken for a defiance, and a challenge to open war. But that you should have observed so much, who are yet in your mother’s belly, was not a thing to be much expected.