as we understand, had heard this piece of news, when passing through Paris on his way to Saumur, probably in June.  He had heard it, seemingly, on board the Charenton boat—­i.e. as we guess, on board the boat plying on the Marne between Paris and Charenton.  Hence the punning phraseology of Milton’s reply.  He would rather that such a piece of news had been heard by anybody on board Charon’s/ boat than by Oldenburg on board the Charenton wherry.  Altogether the idea that Morus should be admitted as one of the pastors of the most important Protestant church in France was, we can see, horrible to him; and he hoped the calamity might yet be averted.—­For the time it seemed likely that it would be.  There had been ample enough knowledge in Paris of the coil of scandals about the character of Morus; and copies of Milton’s two Anti-Morus pamphlets had been in circulation there long before Oldenburg took with him into France his new bundle of them for distribution.  Accordingly, though there was a strong party for Morus, disbelieving the scandals, and anxious to have him for the Charenton church on account of his celebrity as a preacher, there were dissentients among the congregation and even in the consistory itself.  One hears of Sieur Papillon and Sieur Beauchamp, Parisian advocates, and elders in the church, as heading the opposition to the call.  The business of the translation of Morus from Amsterdam was, therefore, no easy one.  In any case it would have brought those Protestant church courts of France that had to sanction the admission of Morus at Charenton into communication about him with those courts of the Walloon Church in Holland from whose jurisdiction he was to be removed; and one can imagine the peculiar complications that would arise in a case so extraordinary and involving so much inquiry and discussion.  In fact, for more than two years, the business of the translation of Morus from Amsterdam to Paris was to hang notoriously between the Dutch Walloon Synods, who in the main wanted to disgrace and depose him before they had done with him, and the French Provincial Synods, now roused in his behalf, and willing in the main to receive him back into his native country as a man not without his faults, but more sinned against than sinning.[1]—­And so for the present (Aug. 1657) Morus was still in his Amsterdam professorship, longing to be in France, but uncertain whether his call thither would hold.  How the case ended we shall see in time.  Meanwhile it is quite apparent that Milton was not only willing, but anxious, that his influence should be imported into the affair, to turn the scale, if possible, against the man he detested.  As he had not heard of the call of Morus to Charenton till the receipt of Oldenburg’s letter, his motives originally for despatching a bundle of his Anti-Morus pamphlets into France with Oldenburg can have been only general; but one gathers from his reply to Oldenburg that he thought the pamphlets might