All the articles of Pecock's list, save that on capital punishment, are to be found in the Conclusions; and, although many writers have held that Wycliffe's own views differed greatly from what have been called the "exaggerations of the later and more violent Lollards," all these views may be traced to Wycliffe himself.
Gross exaggerations, such as those in which Valerius Antias indulged, he roundly denounces, and with equal plainness of speech he condemns the family vanity which had so constantly corrupted and distorted the truth.
The minister general, Michael of Cesena, though opposed to the exaggerations of the Spirituals, joined with them in protesting against the condemnation of the fundamental principle of evangelical poverty, and the agitation gradually gained ground.
In all that he said and did he was the son of the people, who had not been broken to the usual social and academic discipline; hence his roughness, his one-sidedness, and his exaggerations; but he is always vigorous, and often brilliant and original.
Modern Christians are tempted to charge the seeming extravagance of St Paul's thought upon his Jewish inheritance, while modern Jews are tempted to stigmatize them as grotesque exaggerations of reasonable rabbinical doctrines.
In the Philebus, however, though a more careful psychological analysis leads him to soften down the exaggerations of this attack on sensual pleasure, the antithesis of knowledge and pleasure is again sharpened, and a desire to depreciate even good pleasures is more strongly shown; still even here pleasure is recognized as a constituent of that philosophic life which is the highest human good, while in the Laws, where the subject is more popularly treated, it is admitted that we cannot convince man that the just life is the best unless we can also prove it to be the pleasantest.
In spite of all its inaccuracies and exaggerations the book served a useful purpose in reviving the self-respect of a despondent people.
He could not, of course, undo the great reforms of his predecessor, but he amended them in such a way as to counteract what he considered the exaggerations of liberalism.
There is, it is true, a smoothness and finish about them not often seen elsewhere; but, as though to avoid the exaggerations of Audubon, Gould usually adopted the tamest of attitudes in which to represent his subjects, whereby expression as well as vivacity is wanting.
Paulus dismisses the miracles as " exaggerations or misapprehensions of quite ordinary events."
It may have been a map of this kind which accounts for Ptolemy's moderate exaggerations of the size of Taprobana (Ceylon).
His talents as an orator and rhetorician were greatly admired by his contemporaries, a number of whom formed themselves into a school called after him Frontoniani, whose avowed object it was to restore the ancient purity and simplicity of the Latin language in place of the exaggerations of the Greek sophistical school.
"The manifest exaggerations," says van Manen, "coupled with the fact that Irenaeus never shows any signs of acquaintance with Florinus.
An unbiased study of the scanty facts of his history, and of the tolerably abundant but scattered and chaotic facts of his literary production, ought to enable any one to steer clear of these exaggerations, while admitting at the same time that it is impossible to give a complete and final account of his attitude towards the riddles of this world and others.
To a later generation it will probably appear that, whatever the exaggerations and the misconceptions to which he was led, his vehement attacks at least called attention to rather grave limitations and defects in the current beliefs and social tendencies of the time.
The mannerisms and grotesque exaggerations of his writings annoyed persons of refinement, and suggest Matthew Arnold's advice to flee " Carlylese " as you would flee the devil.
But when full allowance is made for all such exaggerations, the following facts will show that the decrease has been excessive.
Though there are some singular chronological difficulties in the narrative, and a good many cursory inaccuracies and exaggerations, there is no part of it except, perhaps, certain portions of the journeys in north China, which is open to doubt.
Literature to Galatians (Die Urspriinglichkeit des Galaterbriefes, Leipzig, 1903) involves repeated exaggerations of the literary evidence.
The professors of philosophy there failed to interest him, but he was strongly attracted by the writings of Schleiermacher, which awoke his keen dialectical faculty and delivered him from the vagueness and exaggerations of romantic and somnambulistic mysticism.
His successors carried still farther the practice of dressing up the rather bald chronicles of earlier writers with all the ornaments of rhetoric. The old traditions were altered, almost beyond the possibility of recognition, by exaggerations, interpolations and additions.
The very first verses in the book startle the reader by their exaggerations, e.g.
