e true Catholicism,
like true Protestantism, can only gain by the explosion of historical
falsehoods, if indeed they be false, with the least possible delay.
If (on the other hand) they are truths then you may be trusted to
make out the best possible case for them, and my words will recoil
upon myself.

The dispute was about Puritanism and Catholicism. It was republished
as a pamphlet. It is the only case I have found in which Chesterton
wrote several versions of one letter (to the _Cambridge Review_). In
its final form he omitted one illuminating illustration. Coulton had
maintained that the mediaevals condemned dancing as much as the
Puritans and had dug up various mouldy theologians who classed it as
a mortal sin. Father Lopez retorted by a quotation from St. Thomas
saying it was quite right to dance at weddings and on such like
occasions, provided the dancing was of a decent kind.

Chesterton comments:

We have already travelled very far from the first vision of Mr.
Coulton, of Dark Ages full of one monotonous wail over the mortal sin
of dancing. To class it seriously as a mortal sin is to class it with
adultery or theft or murder. It is interesting to imagine St. Thomas
and the moderate moralists saying: "You may murder at weddings; you
may commit adultery to celebrate your release from prison; you may
steal if you do not do it with immodest gestures," and so on. The
calm tone of St. Thomas about the whole thing is alone evidence of a
social atmosphere different from that described.

The rest of his analysis of Coulton's method of dealing with a
historical document and distorting it is in the published version. A
valuable part of Chesterton's line is also interesting as a comment
on his own historical work. The expert he says is so occupied with
detail that he overlooks the broad facts that anyone could see. On
this point the review of Coulton's Mediaeval History in the _Church
Times_ is illuminating. The reviewer noted that in the index under
the word "Church" occurred such notes as: "soldiers sleeping in,"
"horses stabled in," and other allusions to extraordinary happenings.
But nowhere, he said, could he find any mention of the normal use of
a church--that men prayed in it.

With H. G. Wells several interchanges of letters have shown in
earlier chapters how the soft answer turned aside a wrath easily
aroused, but also easily dissipated. Another exchange of letters