Litterum Professoris, Supplementum Fidei Publicae contra calumnias Joannis Miltoni.  Hagae-Comitum, Typis Adriani Ulacq, 1655.” ("Supplement to the Public Testimony of Alexander Morus, Churchman and Professor of Sacred Literature, in reply to the Calumnies of John Milton.  Hague:  Printed by Adrian Ulac, 1655.”) Ulac prefixes, under the heading “The Printer to the Reader,” a brief explanatory Preface.  “You have here, good Reader,” he says, “the missing remainder of the edition of a Treatise which we lately printed and published under the title Aleaxandri Mori Fides Publica contra calumnias Joannis Miltoni.  This remainder that Reverend gentleman has sent me from France.  Of the whole matter judge as may seem fair and just to you.  Let it suffice for me to have satisfied your curiosity.  Farewell.”  It must have been this Supplementum of Morus, reaching London perhaps in April 1655, or perhaps during the first busy correspondence about the Piedmontese massacre, that delayed the appearance of Milton’s already written Rejoinder to the imperfect Fides Publica.  He would notice this “Supplement” as well as the volume already published, and so have done with Morus altogether.

[Footnote 1:  Vaughan’s Protectorate, I. 73; where “Mr. Miton” appears as “Mr. Hulton.”]

Morus’s Supplementum consists of 105 pages, added to the original Fides Publica, but numbered onwards from the last page there, so as to admit of the binding of the two volumes into one volume consecutively paged, though with two title-pages, differently dated.  The matter also proceeds continuously from the point at which the Fides Publica, broke off.  Referring to the testimony borne to his character in the venerable Diodati’s Letter from Geneva to Salmasius, dated May 9, 1648, and connecting it with Milton’s mention of his personal acquaintance with Diodati formed in his visit to Geneva in 1639, Morus addresses Milton thus: 

“This is that John Diodati upon whom you cast no small stain by your praise, and who truly, if he were alive, would prefer to be in the number of those who are vituperated by you.  Would he were alive!  How he would beat back your pride, not indeed with other pride, but with the gravest smile of contempt!  How he would despise in his great mind your thoughts, sayings, acts, all in one!  How he would anticipate your fine satire, and, moved with holy loathing, spit upon it! ‘With him,’ you say, ’I had daily society at Geneva.’  But what did you learn from him?  What of desirable contagion did you carry away from his acquaintance?  Often have we heard him enumerating those friends he had in your country whom he commended on the score of either learning or goodness.  Of you we never heard a syllable from him.”

Then, after telling of his affectionate parting with Diodati at Geneva, when both, were in tears and the old man blessed him, he proceeds to quote other Testimonials,