loss of time,[300] and ere the
year was out Alesius rejoined in that Responsio ad Cochlei
calumnias,[301] in which he has given so touching an account of his own
maltreatment, so interesting a statement of his own opinions in matters
of faith and church polity, and so trenchant a reply to the sophistries
and slanders of his opponent.[302]

[Sidenote: Cochlaeus.]

This able and, for the age, singularly temperate reply made a deep
impression in England as well as in Scotland, and doubtless prepared the
way for that offer of employment there which two years subsequently was
made him by Cranmer, whom, in his moderation and earnest desire to avoid
a total rupture between the old church and the new life, he then so much
resembled. But whatever its merits, the disputatious Cochlaeus--"der
gewaffnete mann," as Luther sneeringly terms him--was determined that
his opponent should not have the last word in the dispute, and
accordingly in August 1534 he published at Leipsic his Apologia pro
Scotiae Regno adversus personatum Alexandrum Alesium Scotum.[303] In
this treatise he repeats the assertion in his previous one that
Melanchthon, not Alesius, was the author of these epistles. He charges
Alesius with putting lies into the mouth of a foreigner to the discredit
of his native country, and tells him that if he had the power he would
gladly send him away to Scotland with his hands tied behind his back to
be ignominiously punished as a traitor and a public slanderer. His
opponent's minute and temperate narrative of facts appears to have made
no impression on him. He is content magisterially to pronounce it absurd
and incredible, and inconsistent with itself as well as with
probability. He appears in his ire to forget that the king of Scots and
his subjects were better able to judge of its truthfulness than he, a
foreigner, could be; and that after saying all he could for the bishops
and superior clergy in his former reply, he had been obliged to conclude
with the damaging admission that possibly there were "bishops and
prelates who, neither in sanctity of life nor in acquaintance with
sacred learning, responded to or satisfied their dignity and office."

[Sidenote: Effect of his Treatises.]

The epistles of Cochlaeus, if abusive and less cogent in reasoning, as
well as less relieved by any sparkle of wit or racy anecdote than those
of Alesius, are certainly written in a more easy and flowing Latin
style, and, in that respect at le