uting, that there have been found upstart Doctors
who have made a drunken onslaught on the handwriting that is of
heaven; who have given judgment against it as being in many
places defiled, defective, false, surreptitious; who have
corrected some passages, tampered with others; torn out others;
who have converted every bulwark wherewith it was guarded into
Lutheran "spirits," what I may call phantom ramparts and parted
walls. All this they have done that they might not be utterly
dumbfounded by falling upon Scripture texts contrary to their
errors, texts which they would have found it as hard to get over
as to swallow hot ashes or chew stones. This then has been my
First Reason, a strong and a just one. By revealing the shadowy
and broken powers of the adverse faction, it has certainly given
new courage to a Christian man, not unversed in these studies, to
fight for the Letters Patent of the Eternal King against the
remnant of a routed foe.

SECOND REASON

THE SENSE OF HOLY WRIT

Another thing to incite me to the encounter, and to disparage in
my eyes the poor forces of the enemy, is the habit of mind which
they continually display in their exposition of the Scriptures,
full of deceit, void of wisdom. As philosophers, you would seize
these points at once. Therefore I have desired to have you for my
audience. Suppose, for example, we ask our adversaries on what
ground they have concocted that novel and sectarian opinion which
banishes Christ from the Mystic Supper. If they name the Gospel,
we meet them promptly. On our side are the words, _this is my
body, this is my blood._ This language seemed to Luther himself
so forcible, that for all his strong desire to turn Zwinglian,
thinking by that means to make it most awkward for the Pope,
nevertheless he was caught and fast bound by this most open
context, and gave in to it (_Luther, epistol. ad Argent._), and
confessed Christ truly present in the Most Holy Sacrament no less
unwillingly than the demons of old, overcome by His miracles,
cried aloud that He was Christ, the Son of God. Well then, the
written text gives us the advantage: the dispute now turns on the
sense of what is written. Let us examine this from the words in
the context, _my body which is given for you, my blood which hall
be shed for many_. Still the explanation on Calvin's side is most
hard, on ours easy and quite plain.

What further? Compare the Scriptures, they say, one with another.
By all mean