n blaming him;--these are the real
foes which I have to fight, and the auxiliaries to whom my
Accuser makes his advances.

Well, I must break through this barrier of prejudice against me
if I can; and I think I shall be able to do so. When first I
read the Pamphlet of Accusation, I almost despaired of meeting
effectively such a heap of misrepresentations and such a
vehemence of animosity. What was the good of answering first one
point, and then another, and going through the whole circle of
its abuse; when my answer to the first point would be forgotten,
as soon as I got to the second? What was the use of bringing out
half a hundred separate principles or views for the refutation
of the separate counts in the Indictment, when rejoinders of
this sort would but confuse and torment the reader by their
number and their diversity? What hope was there of condensing
into a pamphlet of a readable length, matter which ought freely
to expand itself into half a dozen volumes? What means was
there, except the expenditure of interminable pages, to set
right even one of that series of "single passing hints," to use
my Assailant's own language, which, "as with his finger tip he
had delivered" against me?

All those separate charges had their force in being
illustrations of one and the same great imputation. He had
already a positive idea to illuminate his whole matter, and to
stamp it with a force, and to quicken it with an interpretation.
He called me a _liar_,--a simple, a broad, an intelligible, to
the English public a plausible arraignment; but for me, to
answer in detail charge one by reason one, and charge two by
reason two, and charge three by reason three, and so on through
the whole string both of accusations and replies, each of which
was to be independent of the rest, this would be certainly
labour lost as regards any effective result. What I needed was a
corresponding antagonist unity in my defence, and where was that
to be found? We see, in the case of commentators on the
prophecies of Scripture, an exemplification of the principle on
which I am insisting; viz. how much more powerful even a false
interpretation of the sacred text is than none at all;--how a
certain key to the visions of the Apocalypse, for instance, may
cling to the mind (I have found it so in the case