He opens with noticing the parallel which the author of the "Eclipse" has instituted between his use of ridicule and that of Pascal; and replies that he signally violates Pascal's two rules, _first_, to speak with truth against one's opponents and not with calumny; _secondly_, not to wound them needlessly.

"Neglect of the first rule (says he) has given to these books [the "Eclipse" and its "Defence"] their apparent controversial success; disregard of the second their literary point." He adds, "We shall show that their author misstates and misrepresents doctrines; garbles quotations, interpolating words which give the passage he cites reference to subjects quite foreign from those to which in the original they apply, while retaining the inverted commas, which are the proper sign of faithful transcription; that similarly, he allows himself the licence of omission of the very words on which the controversy hangs, while in appearance citing _verbatim_;...

and that he habitually employs a sophistry too artful (we fear) to be undesigned.

May he not himself have been deceived, some indulgent render perhaps asks, by the fallacies which have been so successful with others?
It would be as reasonable to suppose that the grapes which deluded the birds must have deluded Zeuxis who painted them." So grave an accusation against my assailant's truthfulness, coming not from me, but from a third party, and that, evidently a man who knew well what he was saying and why,--could not be passed over unnoticed, although that religious world, which reads one side only, continued to buy the "Eclipse" and its "Defence" greedily, and not one in a thousand of them was likely to see the "Prospective Review," In the second edition of the "Defence" the writer undertakes to defend himself against my advocate, in on Appendix of 19 closely printed pages, the "Defence" itself being 218.

The "Eclipse," in its 9th edition of small print, is 393 pages.