I declare, loudly and publicly, to those who have
threatened me, that they are notorious slanderers and most impudent
liars, if they do not discover these crimes before the whole world.
Come forth, then, mine accusers! and publish your lies upon the
house-tops, in place of telling them in the ear, and keeping
yourselves out of harm's way by telling them in the ear. Some may
think this a scandalous way of managing the dispute. It was
scandalous, I grant, to impute to me such a crime as heresy, and to
fix upon me the suspicion of many others besides; but, by asserting my
innocence, I am merely applying the proper remedy to the scandal
already in existence."
Truly, fathers, never were your reverences more roughly handled,
and never was a poor man more completely vindicated. Since you have
made no reply to such a peremptory challenge, it must be concluded
that you are unable to discover the slightest shadow of criminality
against him. You have had very awkward scrapes to get through
occasionally; but experience has made you nothing the wiser. For, some
time after this happened, you attacked the same individual in a
similar strain, upon another subject; and he defended himself after
the same spirited manner, as follows: "This class of men, who have
become an intolerable nuisance to the whole of Christendom, aspire,
under the pretext of good works, to dignities and domination, by
perverting to their own ends almost all laws, human and divine,
natural and revealed.
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