nd became a student in divinity, when he accepted quietly, like
a sensible man, the doctrines which he had been brought up to believe.
At the time when Henry VIII. was writing against Luther, Latimer was
fleshing his maiden sword in an attack upon Melancthon;[115] and he
remained, he said, till he was thirty, "in darkness and the shadow of
death." About this time he became acquainted with Bilney, whom he calls
"the instrument whereby God called him to knowledge." In Bilney,
doubtless, he found a sound instructor; but a careful reader of his
sermons will see traces of a teaching for which he was indebted to no
human master. His deepest knowledge was that which stole upon him
unconsciously through the experience of life and the world. His words
are like the clear impression of a seal; the account and the result of
observations, taken first hand, on the condition of the English men and
women of his time, in all ranks and classes, from the palace to the
prison. He shows large acquaintance with books; with the Bible, most of
all; with patristic divinity and school divinity; and history, sacred
and profane: but if this had been all, he would not have been the
Latimer of the Reformation, and the Church of England would not,
perhaps, have been here to-day. Like the physician, to whom a year of
practical experience in a hospital teaches more than a life of closet
study, Latimer learnt the mental disorders of his age in the age itself;
and the secret of that art no other man, however good, however wise,
could have taught him. He was not an echo, but a voice; and he drew his
thoughts fresh from the fountain--from the facts of the era in which God
had placed him.

[Sidenote: His early reputation as a preacher at Cambridge.]

[Sidenote: Personal character of his addresses.]

[Sidenote: He offends the Bishop of Ely.]

[Sidenote: Wolsey's judgment on the bishop's complaint.]

He became early famous as a preacher at Cambridge, from the first, "a
seditious fellow," as a noble lord called him in later life, highly
troublesome to unjust persons in authority. "None, except the
stiff-necked and uncircumcised, ever went away from his preaching, it
was said, without being affected with high detestation of sin, and moved
to all godliness and virtue."[116] And, in his audacious simplicity, he
addressed himself always to his individual hearers, giving his words a
personal application, and often addressing men by name. This habit
brought him