on the cross an inscription in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, the
knowledge of languages, and more especially of Latin, Greek and Hebrew,
must be useless to a Christian minister. [25] Indeed, he was so far
from knowing many languages, that he knew none; nor can the most corrupt
passage in Hebrew be more unintelligible to the unlearned than his
English often is to the most acute and attentive reader. [26] One of the
precious truths which were divinely revealed to this new apostle was,
that it was falsehood and adulation to use the second person plural
instead of the second person singular. Another was, that to talk of the
month of March was to worship the bloodthirsty god Mars, and that to
talk of Monday was to pay idolatrous homage to the moon. To say Good
morning or Good evening was highly reprehensible, for those phrases
evidently imported that God had made bad days and bad nights. [27] A
Christian was bound to face death itself rather than touch his hat
to the greatest of mankind. When Fox was challenged to produce any
Scriptural authority for this dogma, he cited the passage in which it is
written that Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego were thrown into the fiery
furnace with their hats on; and, if his own narrative may be trusted,
the Chief Justice of England was altogether unable to answer this
argument except by crying out, "Take him away, gaoler." [28] Fox
insisted much on the not less weighty argument that the Turks never show
their bare heads to their superiors; and he asked, with great animation,
whether those who bore the noble name of Christians ought not to surpass
Turks in virtue. [29] Bowing he strictly prohibited, and, indeed,
seemed to consider it as the effect of Satanical influence; for, as he
observed, the woman in the Gospel, while she had a spirit of infirmity,
was bowed together, and ceased to bow as soon as Divine power had
liberated her from the tyranny of the Evil One. [30] His expositions of
the sacred writings were of a very peculiar kind. Passages, which had
been, in the apprehension of all the readers of the Gospels during
sixteen centuries, figurative, he construed literally. Passages, which
no human being before him had ever understood in any other than a
literal sense, he construed figuratively. Thus, from those rhetorical
expressions in which the duty of patience under injuries is enjoined he
deduced the doctrine that selfdefence against pirates and assassins is
unlawful. On the other hand, the p