[Footnote 1:  Bayle, both in Article Spanheim and in Article Morus.]

  TO EZEKIEL SPANHEIM OF GENEVA.

I know not by what accident it has happened that your letter has reached me little less than three months after date.  There is clearly extreme need of a speedier conveyance of mine to you; for, though from day to day I was resolving to write it, I now perceive that, hindered by some constant occupations, I have put it off nearly another three months.  I would not have you understand from this my tardiness in replying that my grateful sense of your kindness to me has cooled, but rather that the remembrance has sunk deeper from my longer and more frequent daily thinking of my duty to you in return.  Late performance of duty has at least this excuse for itself, that there is a clearer confession of obligation to do a thing when it is done so long after than if it had been done immediately.

You are not wrong, in the first place, in the opinion of me expressed in the beginning of your letter—­to wit, that I am not likely to be surprised at being addressed by a foreigner; nor could you, indeed, have a more correct impression of me than precisely by thinking that I regard no good man in the character of a foreigner or a stranger.  That you are such I am readily persuaded by your being the son of a most learned and most saintly father, also by your being well esteemed by good men, and also finally by the fact that you hate the bad.  With which kind of cattle as I too happen to have a warfare, Calandrini has but acted with his usual courtesy, and in accordance with my own sentiment, in signifying to you that it would be very gratifying to me if you lent me your help against a common adversary.  This you have most obligingly done in this very letter, part of which, with the author’s name not mentioned, I have not hesitated, trusting in your regard for me, to insert by way of evidence in my forthcoming Defensio [in reply to More’s Fides Publica].  This book, as soon as it is published, I will direct to be sent to you, if there is any one to whose care I may rightly entrust it.  Any letters you may intend for me, meanwhile, you will not, I think, be unsafe if you send under cover to Turretin of Geneva, now staying in London, whose brother in Geneva you know; through whom as this of mine will reach you most conveniently, so will yours reach me.  For the rest I would assure you that you have won a high place in my esteem, and that I particularly wish to be loved by you yet more.

  Westminster:  March 24, 1654-5.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Epist.  Fam. 17.]