The Peril of the Republic of the United States of America - Percy T. Magan

crowns to the man who would bring her a preacher
dead or alive, the popular thirst for the exercises of
the reformed religion could no longer be slaked at
the obscure and hidden fountains where their
priests had so long privately ministered. ...
“Apostate priests were not the only preachers.
To the ineffable disgust of the conservatives in
church and state, there were men with little
education, utterly devoid of Hebrew, of lowly
station,--hatters, curriers, tanners, dyers, and the
like,--who began to preach also; remembering,
unseasonably perhaps, that the early disciples,
selected by the founder of Christianity, had not all
been doctors of theology with diplomas from a
‘renowned university.’ But if the nature of such
men were subdued to what it worked in, that
charge could not be brought against ministers with
the learning and accomplishments of Ambrose
Willie, Marnier, Guy de Bray, or Francis Junius,
the man whom Scaliger called the ‘greatest of all
theologians since the days of the apostles.’ An
aristocratic sarcasm could not be leveled against
Peregrine de la Grange, of a noble family in
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