In his preface to The Mysterie of Rhetorique Unvail'd (1657), John Smith recommends his handbook of figures and tropes not to those who would practice the art of eloquence but to those who would decipher its conundrums, not to the orators, in other words, but to the readers, and in particular to the readers of Scripture. And in its construction of audience, Smith's book, like the great preponderance of post-Reformation rhetorics in England, markedly distinguishes itself from its classical forebears: the critical site for rhetorical negotiation is no longer the forum nor even, as one might expect, the pulpit, but rather the private intersection of reader and text. Upon the reading of Scripture great matters depend, and wrong reading of God's accommodated self-representation – in particular the literal reading of those passages which ought to be taken in the spirit of figures and tropes – may seriously imperil the faithful. To which general warning John Smith appends a pointed example: “Origen,” he writes, “would sometimes take that literally, which ought to be understood mystically, and thus mistaking that place, Matth. 19.12. And there be Eunuches, which have made themselves Eunuches for the Kingdom of heavens sake: he gelt himself….” Bungle the Word of the Father and lose the instrument of paternity; reduce the spirit to the letter and alienate the Logos in a gobbet of severed flesh.