 seen in the whole world, the Anti-nosarians denied that a
nose of 575 geometrical feet in length could be worn, at least by a middle-siz'd
man - The Popish doctors swore it could - The Lutheran doctors said No; - it
could not.
    This at once started a new dispute, which they pursued a great way upon the
extent and limitation of the moral and natural attributes of God - That
controversy led them naturally into Thomas Aquinas, and Thomas Aquinas to the
devil.
    The stranger's nose was no more heard of in the dispute - it just served as
a frigate to launch them into the gulph of school-divinity, - and then they all
sailed before the wind.
    Heat is in proportion to the want of true knowledge.
    The controversy about the attributes, etc. instead of cooling, on the
contrary had inflamed the Strasburgers imaginations to a most inordinate degree
- The less they understood of the matter, the greater was their wonder about it
- they were left in all the distresses of desire unsatisfied - saw their
doctors, the Parchmentarians, the Brassarians, the Turpentarians, on one side -
the Popish doctors on the other, like Pantagruel and his companions in quest of
the oracle of the bottle, all embarked and out of sight.
    -- The poor Strasburgers left upon the beach!
    - What was to be done? - No delay - the uproar increased - every one in
disorder - the city gates set open. -
    Unfortunate Strasburgers! was there in the store-house of nature - was there
in the lumber-rooms of learning - was there in the great arsenal of chance, one
single engine left undrawn forth to torture your curiosities, and stretch your
desires, which was not pointed by the hand of fate to play upon your hearts? - I
dip not my pen into my ink to excuse the surrender of yourselves - 'tis to write
your panegyrick. Shew me a city so macerated with expectation - who neither eat,
or drank, or slept, or prayed, or hearkened to the calls either of religion or
nature for seven and twenty days together, who could have held out one day
longer.
    On the twenty-eighth the courteous stranger had promised to return to
Strasburg.
    Seven thousand coaches (Slawkenbergius must certainly have made some mistake
in his numerical characters) 7000 coaches - 15000 single horse chairs -- 20000
waggons, crouded as full as they could all hold with senators, counsellors,
syndicks-beguines, widows, wives, virgins, canons, concubines, all in their
coaches - The abbess of Quedlinberg, with the
