Or, if this will not do, let us try it in another case (which I instanced before) and in his own terms.  Suppose he had thought it necessary (and I think it was as much so as the other) to shew us what is contained in the idea of a mousetrap, he must have proceeded in these terms.  “It would be in vain for an intelligent being, to set rules for hindering a mouse from eating his cheese, unless he can inflict upon that mouse some punishment, which, is not the natural consequence of eating the cheese.  For, to tell her, it may lie heavy on her stomach; that she will grow too big to get back into her hole, and the like, can be no more than advice:  therefore, we must find out some way of punishing her, which hath more inconveniences than she will ever suffer by the mere eating of cheese.”  After this, who is so slow of understanding, as not to have in his mind a full and complete idea of a mouse-trap?  Well.—­The Free thinkers may talk what they please of pedantry, and cant, and jargon of schoolmen, and insignificant terms in the writings of the clergy, if ever the most perplexed and perplexing follower of Aristotle from Scotus to Suarez[11] could be a match for this author.

[Footnote 11:  Duns Scotus flourished in the thirteenth century.  He studied at Oxford and Paris, and his learning and acumen in reasoning earned for him the title The Subtle Doctor.  He died at Cologne in 1308.  He was a strong upholder of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.  His works are published in twelve volumes folio.

Francis Suarez (1548-1617) was a Spanish Jesuit who wrote a work by command of the Pope against the English Reformation.  He published some very able religio-philosophical treatises, from the Roman Catholic point of view; but, indeed, his writings altogether were enormous, so far as their number are concerned. [T.  S.]]

But the strength of his arguments is equal to the clearness of his definitions.  For, having most ignorantly divided government into three parts, whereof the first contains the other two; he attempteth to prove that the clergy possess none of these by a divine right.  And he argueth thus, p. vii.  “As to a legislative power, if that belongs to the clergy by a divine right, it must be when they are assembled in convocation:  but the 25 Hen.  VIII. c. 19 is a bar to any such divine right, because that act makes it no less than a praemunire for them, so much so as to meet without the king’s writ, &c.”  So that the force of his argument lieth here; if the clergy had a divine right, it is taken away by the 25th of Henry the Eighth.  And as ridiculous as this argument is, the preface and book are founded upon it.