The following curious illustration, which I met with the other day in a
book where few would be likely to look for it, seems to me fairly to
deserve a place among the Notes of your interesting publication. It forms
the _moral_ exposition, by Cornelius à Lapide, of Ex. vii. 22.: "And the
magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantments," &c.
"See here," he says, "how the devil contends with God, the magicians
with the prophets, and heretics with the orthodox, by imitating their
words and deeds. In our days, as the English Martyrology testifies,
Richard White (_Vitus_) disputed with a wicked English Calvinist, who
was more mighty in drinking than in argument, concerning the keys of
the Church, and when the heretic pertinaciously asserted that they were
given to himself, White wittily and ingeniously replied: 'I believe
that they have been given to you as they were to Peter, but with this
distinction, that his were the keys of heaven, but yours of the
beer-cellar; {513} for this the _rubicund promontory of your nose_
indicates.' Thus do heretics turn water into blood. This is their
miracle."
Richard White I presume to have been an ejected Fellow of New College,
Oxford, afterwards rector of the University of Douai, and a Count Palatine
of the empire, author of sundry antiquarian and theological works; but it
is surely strange that this piece of ribaldry, of which he had been guilty,
should be thought worthy of being recorded; and still more so, that it
should be thus applied by a grave and learned Jesuit commentator.