to's Doctrine of Immortality of Souls_. He also translated
Plotinus and the writings falsely attributed to Dionysius the
Areopagite, and put them anew into spiritual circulation.

Ficino, though living in an age of corruption and debauchery, and
though closely associated with Humanists who had hardly a thin veneer
of Christianity, and who were bent on reviving paganism, yet himself
maintained a positive Christian faith and a pure and simple life. He
found it possible to be a priest in the Christian Church and at the
same time to be a high-priest in the temple of Plato, because he found
faith and reason to be indivisible and indissoluble. His influence was
marked upon the early English Humanists, Linacre, Grocyn, Colet, and
More, and he was a vital influence in the new revival, which occurred
in the seventeenth century, of Plato and Plotinus as contributors to a
virile religion based upon an inherent divine and human relationship.

Still another influence, of a very different sort, came to England by
way of Italy--the intense interpretation of Faith as the way of
salvation, expressed in the writings of the Spanish reformer, Juan de
Valdes, and in the powerful sermons of his two Italian disciples,
Bernardino Ochino (1487-1564) and Pietro Martire Vermigli (1500-1562),
generally known as Peter Martyr. Juan de Valdes, twin brother of the
Humanist, Alfonso de Valdes, the friend of the Emperor Charles V., was
born of a distinguished Castilian family toward the end of the
fifteenth century. He was splendidly prepared in his youth, both
mentally and religiously, for the great work of his life, which was to
be a spiritual mover of other souls. As his views of the needed
transformation of Christianity broadened and intensified he concluded
that he would be safer in Italy than in Spain, and he thus took up his
residence in Naples in 1529. Here he became the centre of a remarkable
circle of spiritual men and women who were dedicating themselves to the
reform of the Church and to the {237} propagation of a more vital
religion. Ochino, the most powerful Italian preacher of the age; the
fervent scholar, Vermigli; the papal secretary, Carnesecchi, later a
martyr to the new faith; Vittoria Colonna, the friend of Michael Angelo
Buonarotti, and the beautiful Giulia Gonzaga, were among those who
kindled their torches from his burning flame. For the instruction of
his friends--especially for Giulia Gonzaga--de Valdes translated St.