Sermons. E-book. Formato PDF - 9780259639237

Latimer is the best example the English Church can show of the popular preacher. The sermons of Andrewes or Donne make their appeal to a trained intelligence which can "divide," even to the last scruple, "the word of truth"; Latimer, whether he is preach¬ing in a country town or before the king at Westminster, always speaks so that the servants and handmaids shall carry away as much as the gentler sort He has but one subject, that of righteousness, and the appeal of righteousness is not to the intellect, but to the conscience.

This is not to say that Latimer was himself unlearned. As a young man he was elected fellow of his college (Clare Hall) at Cambridge, and was one of twelve preachers licensed by the University to preach in any part of England. When his university suspected him of the Lutheran heresy, and he was summoned before Wolsey, he is said to have shown himself more at home in Duns Scotus than Wolsey's chaplains, who were set to examine him. It is probable that he was not deeply versed in the New Learning, being born a little too early for that The year 1510, in which Erasmus went to Cambridge to teach Greek was the year in which Latimer took his degree, and we know that at first the new professor found but few pupils.

The story of Latimer's first attraction to the Reformed doctrines is told by himself in the first sermon on the Lord's Prayer:

Master Bilney, or rather Saint Bilney, that suffered death for God's word sake, the same Bilney was the instrument whereby God called me to knowledge ; for I may thank him, next to God, for that knowledge that I have in the word of God.