language, which had fallen so long into
disrepute in Oxford, and had only been revived with some difficulty
and no small opposition a few years previously.

But just latterly the talk at the Bridge House had concerned itself
less with learned matters of Greek and Roman lore, or the problems
of the heavenly bodies, than with those more personal and burning
questions of the day, which had set so many thinking men to work to
inquire of their own consciences how far they could approve the
action of church and state in refusing to allow men to think and
read for themselves, where their own salvation (as many argued) was
at stake.

It was not the first time that a little group of earnest thinkers
had been gathered together at Dr. Langton's house. The physician
was a person held in high esteem in Oxford. He took no open part
now in her counsels, he gave no lectures; he lived the life of a
recluse, highly esteemed and respected. He would have been a bold
man who would have spoken ill of him or his household, and
therefore it seemed to him that he could very well afford to take
the risk of receiving young men here, who desired to speak freely
amongst themselves and one another in places not so liable to be
dominated by listening ears as the rooms of the colleges and halls
whence they came.

Dr. Langton himself, being a man of liberal views and sound piety,
would very gladly have welcomed some reforms within the church,
which he, in common with all the early Reformers, loved and
venerated far more than modern-day Protestants fully understand.
They could not bear the thought that their Holy Mother was to be
despoiled, and the Body of Christ rent in pieces amongst them. No;
their earnest and ardent wish was that this purging of abuses, this
much-needed reformation, should come from within, should be carried
out by her own priests, headed up, if possible, by the Pope
himself. Such was the dream of many and many a devout and earnest
man at this time; and John Clarke's voice always softened with a
tender reverence as he spoke of the Holy Catholic Church.

So now his eyes lighted with a quick, responsive fire, as he turned
them upon his host.

"That is just what I am ever striving to maintain--that it is not
the church which is in fault, but those who use her name to enforce
edicts which she knows nothing of. 'Search the scriptures, for in
them ye have life,' spoke our Lord. 'Blessed is he that readeth the
words of the prophec