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■ ( Applauses of the People, even against your own.■ ( Judgment : Or if you stand out singly, the" whole Audience will condemn you for your" Ignorance .” Here ends Nazianzen ’s Replyand what follows is a Remark of Jeromes. " No-“ thing is so easy as for a voluble Speaker to im-" pose on an ignorant Assembly, which admires“ most what it understands least.” All that ap-pears from this Passage is, that anciently as wellas now, popular Audiences were wont to mijplacetheir Admiration ; that confident Men sometimesmade their Advantage of this Weakness, and withvery little Learning passed among the Vulgar forPersons of the first Rank in Literature-, that wiseand good Men sometimes diverted themselves withthis Humour, and despised those Preachers , whosought to build a Reputation upon the Suffragesof the Rabble. But that Nazianzen or any otherof the Fathers ever used this Method, we findnot. All he said was jocose, a merry Way of put-ting off Jeromes Enquiry, to which perhaps hewas not prepared with an Answer. In short, sofar was Nazianzen from recommending a sureWay of imposing on an Audience, as the DiJ'cour-jer represents the Thing, that the Sentence inwhich he makes him talk'such Language, is noPart of Nazianzen ’s Reply, but entirely Jerome’s ,who surely never meant to put Nepotian in a Wayof doing that, from which he at the same Timedissuades him in the most earnest Manner. 'Tisfalse therefore to fay, that we are beholden toJerome for this little Piece of Jeer et Hijlory , thetrue Source whereof is our Author’s own Malice >which converts the most innocent Sayings of the

Fathers