allude likewise to my own rescue of the Index of a vigorous pontiff, Sixtus V., from intended and well-provided-for destruction and oblivion. It is seldom, indeed, that guilt of any kind, and particularly fraud, gains so much by its primary success, as not to be wofully overbalanced and punished by the effects of its subsequent detection, when that takes place, which may generally be reckoned upon.
As a striking and instructing illustration of the familiar confidence with which the disciples of Rome put forward their most extravagant and baseless pretensions, as well as of the cool insensibility with which they receive the most palpable exposure of their literary dishonesty, I will present the reader with a quotation from a work not in every hand, and one of considerable ability and importance— "Roman Forgeries, or a true account of False Records, discovering the Impostures and Counterfeit Antiquities of the Church of Rome. By a Faithful Son of the Church of England [Thomas Traherne], London, 1673."
At the end of his Advertisement to the Reader, this author introduces, as an incident which befell him while in pursuit of his favourite studies, that which follows: these are his words—"One evening, as I came out of the Bodleian Library, which is the glory of Oxford and this nation, at the stairs' foot I was saluted by a person that has deserved well
