ow Nicole, his servant-maid, how
good a thing it was to be sure of fighting without being killed, by care
and tierce.[361] "Et cela n'est il pas beau d'etre assure de son fait quand
on se bat contre quelqu'un? La, pousse moi un peu, pour voir. NICOLE. Eh
bien! quoi? M. JOURDAIN. Tout beau. Hola! {219} Ho! doucement. Diantre soit
la coquine! NICOLE. Vous me dites de pousser. M. JOURDAIN. Oui; mais tu me
pousses en tierce, avant que de pousser en quarte, et tu n'as pas la
patience que je pare."

His colleague, my secular tutelary, who also made an anachronistic onset,
with his repartees and his retorts, before there was anything to fire at,
takes what I give by way of subsequent provocation with a good humor which
would make a convert of me if he could afford .01659265 ... of a grain of
logic. He instantly sent me his photograph for the asking, and another
letter in proof. The Thor-hammerer does nothing but grumble, except when he
tells a good story, which he says he had from Dr. Abernethy.[362] A Mr.
James Dunlop was popping at the Papists with a 666-rifled gun, when Dr.
Chalmers[363] quietly said, "Why, Dunlop, you bear it yourself," and handed
him a paper on which the numerals in

I A C O B V S D V N L O P V S
1 100 5 500 5 50 5

were added up. This is almost as good as the _Filii Dei Vicarius_, the
numerical letters of which also make 666. No more of these crazy--I first
wrote _puerile_, but why should young cricketers be libelled?--attempts to
extract religious use from numerical vagaries, and to make God over all a
proposer of _salvation conundrums_: and no more of the trumpery hints about
future destiny which is too great a compliment to call blasphemous. If the
Doctor will cipher upon the letter in [Greek: en hoi metroi metreite
metrethesetai humin][364] with _double Vahu_ cubic measure, he will perhaps
learn to leave off trying to frighten me into gathering grapes from thorns.

Mystical hermeneutics may be put to good use by out-of-the-way people. They
may be made to call the attention {220} of the many to a distinction well
known among the learned. The books of the New Testament have been for 1,500
years divided into two classes: the _acknowledged_ ([Greek:
homologoumena]), which it has always been paradox not to receive; and the
_controverted_ ([Greek: antilegomena]), about which there has always been
that difference of opinion which no scholar overlooks, however he may
decide fo