Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name - of the Faith and Presented to the Illustrious Members of Our Universities by Edmund Campion
page 13 of 141 (09%)
page 13 of 141 (09%)
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However, our business at present is not with Persons, but with Campion. His book was finished and sent up to Persons in March, 1581, with a title altered to suit the controversy which had already begun. It was now _Decem Rationes: quibus fretus, certamen adversariis obtulit in causa Fidei, Edmundus Campianus &c._ "Ten Reasons, for the confidence with which Edmund Campion offered his adversaries to dispute on behalf of the Faith, set before the famous men of our Universities." Persons was charmed, as he had expected to be, with its literary grace. It was in Latin, as had been agreed, and Campion's Latin prose, (though critics of our time find it somewhat silvery and Livian), suited the tastes of that day to perfection. The only thing which made Persons at all thoughtful was the number of references. Campion declared that he was sure he had verified them, as he entered them in his notebook, but Persons, with greater caution, declared that they must be verified anew. The difficulty of this for men living under the ban, and cut off from access to large libraries, was of course great, but through the help of others, especially through Mr. Thomas Fitzherbert of Swynnerton, the task was happily accomplished. Campion came up from the north to Stonor, on the Oxfordshire border where the secret press then was; and there, amid a thousand fears, alarms and dangers, the book was printed. 5. THE PRINTING. Of the actual preparations for printing the _Ten Reasons_, Persons gives this account in his memoirs[3]: Persons was of |
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