Without attempting anything like a complete account of the reception of the book by the public, I may mention as the most obvious proof of its popularity, that more strenuous endeavours were made (so far as I can discover) to answer it than were made in the case of any other assault upon the Elizabethan religious settlement.  Lord Burghley himself, the chief minister of the Crown, called upon the Bishop of London, perhaps the most forward man then on the episcopal bench, to use all endeavours to ensure the publication of a sufficient answer.  Finally they appointed the Regius Professors of Divinity both at Oxford and at Cambridge to provide for the occasion, and it took both of these a long series of months to propound their answers to Campion’s tract, which is only as long as a magazine article.  Speaking broadly, we may say that this was the most that Elizabeth’s Establishment could do officially; and besides this, there were sermons innumerable, and pamphlets not a few by lesser men, as well as disputations in the Tower, of which more must be said later.

This hostile evidence is so striking and so ample that it might seem unnecessary to allege more, but I attach a great deal more importance to the praise of theologians of Campion’s own faith:  for, in the first place this is much harder to obtain than the attention of the persons attacked.  Secondly, those who are acquainted with Catholic theological criticism are at first surprised to find what very severe critics Catholic theologians are one of another.  In this case, where the writer had from the nature of his task to make so much use of rhetorical arguments, allusions, irony, and unusual forms of expression, there was more than usual chance of fault being found, especially as every possible thorny subject is introduced somehow, and that in terms meant to please not Roman theologians, but Oxford students.  Evidently there was danger here that critics should or might be severe, or at least insist on certain changes and emendations.  In fact the work was received with joy, and reprinted frequently and with honour.  I have lately found a letter in its commendation from the Cardinal Secretary of State of that day, and Muret, as we have heard, perhaps the greatest humanist then living in the Catholic ranks, described it as “Libellum aureum, vere digito Dei scriptum.”

7.  THE DISPUTATIONS.

The publication of the Decem Rationes was the last act of Campion’s life of freedom.  He was seized the very next week, and after five months of suffering was martyred on 1 December, 1581.  During that prolonged and unequal struggle against every variety of craft and violence the Ten Reasons continued to have their influence, and on the whole they were extremely helpful, for they enabled the martyr to recover some ground which he had lost while under torture.  During those awful agonies he confessed to having found shelter in the houses of certain gentlemen.