ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 15 



been anciently esteemed at different times, but strangely pre- 

 vailed about the time of Luther, who, finding how great a task 

 he had undertaken against the degenerate traditions of the 

 rimrch, and being unassisted by the opinions of his own age, 

 \\ a> forced to awake antiquity to make a party for him ; whence 

 the- ancient authors both in divinity and the humanities, that 

 had long slept in libraries, began to be generally read. This 

 brought on a necessity of greater application to the original 

 languages wherein those. authors wrote, for the better under- 

 standing and application of their works. Hence also proceeded 

 a delight in their manner of style and phrase, and an admiration 

 of this kind of writing, which was much increased by the enmity 

 now grown up against the schoolmen, who were generally of the 

 contrary party, and whose writings were in a very different style 

 and form, as taking the liberty to coin new and strange words, 

 to avoid circumlocution and express their sentiments acutely, 

 without regard to purity of diction and justness of phrase. And 

 again, because the great labor then was to win and persuade the 

 people, eloquence and variety of discourse grew into request as 

 most suitable for the pulpit, and best adapted to the capacity 

 of the vulgar; so that these four causes concurring, viz., I. 

 admiration of the ancients; 2. enmity to the schoolmen; 3. 

 an exact study of languages; and, 4. a desire of powerful 

 preaching introduced an affected study of eloquence and 

 copiousness of speech, which then began to flourish. This soon 

 grew to excess, insomuch that men studied more after words 

 than matter, more after the choiceness of phrase, and the round 

 and neat composition, sweet cadence of periods, the use of 

 tropes and figures, than after weight of matter, dignity of sub- 

 ject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judg- 

 ment. Then grew into esteem the flowing and watery vein of 

 Orosius,* the Portugal bishop ; then did Sturmius bestow such 

 infinite pains upon Cicero and Hermogenes ; then did Car and 

 Ascham, in their lectures and writings, almost deify Cicero and 

 Demosthenes ; then grew the learning of the schoolmen to be 

 utterly despised as barbarous ; and the whole bent of those times 

 was rather upon fulness than weight. 



Here, therefore, is the first distemper of learning, when men 

 stiuly words and not matter; and though we have given an ex- 

 ample of it from later times, yet such levities have and will be 

 found more or less in all ages. And this must needs discredit 



