Oldenburg had also sent his excuses for the same, but with certain pieces of news from abroad, and certain references to the state of affairs at home.

Among the pieces of news were two of some personal interest to Milton.

One was that the unfinished reply to his _Defensio Prima_, which Salmasius had left in manuscript at his death six years ago, was about to appear as a posthumous publication.

The other was that there was to be a great Synod of the French Protestant Church, at which the case of Morus was to be again discussed.

For, though it was more than two years since Morus had received his call to the collegiate pastorship of the Protestant Church of Paris or Charenton, the question of his admissibility to the charge had hung all that while between the Walloon Synods of the United Provinces and the French Protestant Church Courts, the latter on the whole favouring him, the former more and more bent on disgracing him.