26 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. 



fantastical learning ; the second, contentious learning ; and 

 the last, delicate learning ; vain imaginations, vain alterca 

 tions, and vain affectations ; and with the last I will begin. 

 Martin Luther, conducted no doubt by a higher providence, 

 but in discourse of reason, finding what a province he had 

 undertaken against the Bishop of Rome and the degenerate 

 traditions of the Church, and finding his own solitude, being 

 110 ways aided by the opinions of his own time, was enforced 

 to awake all antiquity, and to call former times to his succour, 



10 to make a party against the present time. So that the 

 ancient authors, both in divinity and in humanity, which had 

 long time slept in libraries, began generally to be read and 

 revolved. This by consequence did draw 011 a necessity of a 

 more exquisite travail in the languages original, wherein 

 those authors did write, for the better understanding of 

 those authors, and the better advantage of pressing and 

 applying their words. And thereof grew again a delight in 

 their manner of style and phrase, and an admiration of that 

 kind of writing ; which was much furthered and precipitated 



20 by the enmity and opposition that the propounders of those 

 primitive, but seeming new opinions, had against the School 

 men ; who were generally of the contrary part, and whose 

 writings were altogether in a different style and form ; 

 taking liberty to coin and frame new terms of art to express 

 their own sense, and to avoid circuit of speech, without regard 

 to the pureness, pleasantness, and, as I may call it, lawfulness 

 of the phrase or word. And again, because the great labour 

 that then was with the people (of whom the Pharisees were 

 wont to say, Execrdbilis ista turba quce non novit legem, [That 



30 wretched crowd that knoweth not the law,] for the winning and 

 persuading of them, there grew of necessity in chief price and 

 request eloquence and variety of discourse, as the fittest and 

 forciblest access into the capacity of the vulgar sort : so 

 that these four causes concurring, the admiration of ancient 

 authors, the hate of the Schoolmen, the exact study of 

 languages, and the efficacy of preaching, did bring in an 



