| Of Penn’s controversial writings, The Sandy Foundation Shaken, which got him into the Tower; Innocency with her Open Face, by which he won his release; The Christian Quaker, and Primitive Christianity Revived, it is needless now to speak. A word must, however, be said concerning the prodigious apologia of Samuel Fisher (1666), entitled Rusticus ad Academicos: a work of nearly 800 quarto pages closely printed, containing single sentences that sometimes run to a page and a half.
8 In spite of its incredible long-windedness, it is a work of great learning and sound sense. Fisher deals in a quite modern manner with the canon of Scripture, showing wide knowledge of its history, and also of the various Biblical manuscripts then accessible to scholars. He can be caustic, too, when he chooses, as when he replies to the argument ofdean Owen that the Holy Spirit, while preserving somewhere the true text, has arranged variations between the MSS. in order to encourage diligence in the study of Scripture—“Whence came this whiffle and whimzy within the circumference of thy figmentious fancy?” |
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