either margin of his cheeks fully written on, but the chin not yet finished, up he rises, a man, by your leave, absolutely nail-perfect, no mere Professor now but a Pontifical Doctor,—­for you might have inscribed upon him, as on a painting, Pontia fecit. [We see now the reason for keeping to the form ‘Pontia.’] Doctor?  Nay rather a codex in which his vengeful critic had scraped her adverse comments with a new stilus.  You felt then, I think, Ulac’s Tables of Tangents and Secants, to a radius of I know not how many painful ciphers, printed on your skin.”

How does Milton meet Morus’s protestations of his innocence both at Geneva and in Leyden, and the evidence he adduces in his behalf?  Respecting the protestations, he notes that they are merely general and that, like his denials of the authorship of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, they are worded equivocally or indistinctly.  Why does he not deny the Pelletta charge and the Bontia charge, and the other charges, one by one specifically, and in a downright manner?  Why does he not go back to Geneva, face the living witnesses and the documentary evidence there waiting him, and abide the issue?  As for the decisions in his favour in the Bontia case by the Walloon Synod and the Supreme Court of Holland, of what worth are they?  One could see, one had even been informed, that there had been influences at work with both tribunals to procure the result, such as it was.  Many good, but easy, men had thought it best, for the reputation of the Christian ministry, not to rake too deeply into such an unpleasant business.  Especially in the Synod the proceedings had been a farce.  When Riverius, the moderator of the Synod, at the close of the proceedings, had said to Morus, “Never was a Moor so whitewashed as you have been to-day,” could not everybody, with any sense of humour, perceive that the Reverend gentleman had been joking?  Then, what had been the formal decision of the Synod? “That nothing had been found in the papers of weight to take away from the Churches their wonted liberty of inviting M. Morus to preach when there was occasion.”  Was that a whitewashing with which to be content?  No wonder that Morus had taken refuge among his paper testimonials.  About the whole system of Testimonials Milton is considerably dubious.  He does not deny that a public testimonial may be an honour, and that there may be proper occasion for such things; but, real discernment of merit being rare, and those who give and those who seek testimonials being but a jumble of the good and the bad together, the abuses of the system bring it into discredit.  “The man of highest quality needs another’s testimonial the least; nor does any good man ever do anything merely to make himself known.”  Waiving that general question, however, one may examine Morus’s testimonials.