and elders in
the church, as heading the opposition to the call. The business of
the translation of Morus from Amsterdam was, therefore, no easy one.
In any case it would have brought those Protestant church courts of
France that had to sanction the admission of Morus at Charenton into
communication about him with those courts of the Walloon Church in
Holland from whose jurisdiction he was to be removed; and one can
imagine the peculiar complications that would arise in a case so
extraordinary and involving so much inquiry and discussion. In fact,
for more than two years, the business of the translation of Morus
from Amsterdam to Paris was to hang notoriously between the Dutch
Walloon Synods, who in the main wanted to disgrace and depose him
before they had done with him, and the French Provincial Synods, now
roused in his behalf, and willing in the main to receive him back
into his native country as a man not without his faults, but more
sinned against than sinning.[1]--And so for the present (Aug. 1657)
Morus was still in his Amsterdam professorship, longing to be in
France, but uncertain whether his call thither would hold. How the
case ended we shall see in time. Meanwhile it is quite apparent that
Milton was not only willing, but anxious, that _his_ influence
should be imported into the affair, to turn the scale, if possible,
against the man he detested. As he had not heard of the call of Morus
to Charenton till the receipt of Oldenburg's letter, his motives
originally for despatching a bundle of his Anti-Morus pamphlets into
France with Oldenburg can have been only general; but one gathers
from his reply to Oldenburg that he thought the pamphlets might now
be of use specifically in the business of the proposed translation.
Indeed, one can discern a tone of disappointment in Milton's letter
with Oldenburg's report of what he had been able to do with the
pamphlets hitherto. He might have spared himself the expense, he
says, and Oldenburg the trouble. Oldenburg, as we know (Vol. IV. pp.
626-627), had never been very enthusiastic over Milton's onslaughts
on Morus, The distribution of the Anti-Morus publications, therefore,
may not have been to his taste. Milton seems to hint as much.

[Footnote 1: Bayle, Art. Morus; Brace's Life of Morus, 204 et
seq.--It was deemed of great importance by the English Royalists
that they should be able to report of Charles II., when Paris was
his residence, that he attended the church