scovered in Paul the
doctrine of justification by faith only. To I Corinthians viii, he
wrote: "It is almost profane to speak of the merit of works, especially
towards God. . . . The opinion that we can be justified by works is an
error for which the Jews are especially condemned. . . . Our only hope
is in God's grace." Lefevre's works opened up a new world to the
theologians of the time. Erasmus's friend Beatus Rhenanus wrote that
the richness of the _Quintuplex Psalter_ made him poor. Thomas More
said that English students owed him much. Luther used the two works of
the Frenchman as the texts for his early lectures. From them he drew
very heavily; indeed it was doubtless Lefevre who first suggested to
him the formula of his famous "sola fide."

The religious renaissance in England was led by a disciple of Pico
della Mirandola, John Colet, [Sidenote: Colet, d. 1519] a man of
remarkably pure life, and Dean of St. Paul's. He wrote, though he did
not publish, some commentaries on the Pauline epistles and on the
Mosaic account of creation. Though he knew no Greek, and was not an
easy or elegant writer of Latin, he was allied to the humanists by his
desire to return to the real sources of Christianity, and by his search
for the historical sense of his texts. Though in some respects he was
under the fantastic notions of the Areopagite, in others his
interpretation was rational, free and undogmatic. He exercised a
considerable influence on Erasmus and on a few choice spirits of the
time.

The humanism of Germany centered in the universities. At the close of
the fifteenth century new courses in the Latin classics, in Greek and
in Hebrew, began to supplement the medieval curriculum of logic and
philosophy. At every academy there sprang up a circle of "poets," as
they called themselves, often of {54} lax morals and indifferent to
religion, but earnest in their championship of culture. Nor were these
circles confined entirely to the seats of learning. Many a city had
its own literary society, one of the most famous being that of
Nuremberg. Conrad Mutianus Rufus drew to Gotha, [Sidenote: Mutian,
1471-1526] where he held a canonry, a group of disciples, to whom he
imparted the Neo-Platonism he had imbibed in Italy. Disregarding
revelation, he taught that all religions were essentially the same. "I
esteem the decrees of philosophers more than those of priests," he
wrote.

[Sidenote: Reuchlin, 1455-1522]

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