I think I have stirred up this puddle sufficiently.  I now finish.  Nor must you think me unfair for having turned my argument against Lutherans and Zwinglians indiscriminately.  For, remembering their common parentage, they wish to be brothers and friends to one another; and they take it as a grave affront, whenever any distinction is drawn between them in any point but one.  I am not of consequence enough to claim for myself so much as an undistinguished place among the select theologians who at this day have declared war on heresies:  but this I know, that, puny as I am, I run no risk while, supported by the grace of Christ, I shall do battle, with the aid of heaven and earth, against such fabrications as these, so odious, so tasteless, so stupid.

NINTH REASON

SOPHISM

It is a shrewd saying that a one-eyed man may be king among the blind.  With uneducated people a mock-proof has force which a school of philosophers dismisses with scorn.  Many are the offences of the adversary under this head; but his case is made out by four fallacies chiefly, fallacies which I would rather unravel in the University than in a popular audience.  The first vice is [Greek:  skiamachia], with mighty effort hammering at breezes and shadows.  In this way:  against such as have sworn to celibacy and vowed chastity, because, while marriage is good, virginity is better (1 Cor. vii.), Scripture texts are brought up speaking honourably of marriage.  Whom do they hit?  Against the merit of a Christian man, a merit dyed in the Blood of Christ, otherwise null, testimonies are alleged whereby we are bidden to put our trust neither in nature nor in the law, but in the Blood of Christ.  Whom do they refute?  Against those who worship Saints, as Christ’s servants, especially acceptable to Him, whole pages are quoted, forbidding the worship of many gods?  Where are these many gods?  By such arguments, which I find in endless quantity in the writings of heretics, they cannot hurt us, they may bore you.

Another vice is [Greek:  logomachia], which leaves the sense, and wrangles loquaciously over the word. Find me Mass or Purgatory in the Scriptures, they say.  What then?  Trinity, Consubstantial, Person, are they nowhere in the Bible, because these words are not found?  Allied to this fault is the catching at letters, when, to the neglect of usage and the mind of the speakers, war is waged on the letters of the alphabet.  For instance, thus they say:  Presbyter to the Greeks means nothing else than elder; Sacrament, any mystery.  On this, as on all other points, St. Thomas shrewdly observes:  “In words, we must look not whence they are derived, but to what meaning they are put.”