“Do you not think, my fathers, that this passage is singularly applicable to our subject? The letters which I have hitherto written are ‘only a little sport before the real combat.’ As yet I have been only playing with the foils, and ‘rather indicating the wounds that might be given you than inflicting any.’ I have merely exposed your sayings to the light, without commenting on them. ‘If they have excited laughter, it is only because they are so laughable in themselves.’ These sayings come upon us with such surprise, it is impossible to help laughing at them; for nothing produces laughter more than surprising disproportion between what one hears and what one expects. In what other way could the most of these matters be treated? for, as Tertullian says, ‘To treat them seriously would be to sanction them.’” 18
Table of Contents
CHAPTER V. THE ‘PROVINCIAL LETTERS.’
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