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140 conversion, the Christian Knight of Erasmus had +fallen into his hands. He conceived for this book, as well as for the Colloquies and similar works of the author, an aversion in which time only confirmed him. Not that he was insensible to the author's grace of style (for it is said he made extracts from the Christian Knight in order to familiarize himself with the niceties of the Latin tongue), nor that he found heterodox propositions in it; but he felt repulsed by the color in which things and ideas were presented, by the malicious satire, lack of feeling, vanity, and hollow scepticism which were prominent on every page. Undoubtedly even if Luther had not started his Reformation, Ignatius would have become a leader in a reform opposed to the radical school of humanists, to whose disastrous influence the immorality of the time and the worldliness of many ecclesiastics is, to a great extent, to be ascribed.

The dependence of the Ratio on the University of Paris and the humanistic schools of the Netherlands refutes also the supposition that the Jesuits have drawn from Sturm's "Plan of Studies". Sturm himself had studied, from 1521-1523, in the school of the Brethren in Liège, from 1524-1529 at Louvain in the famous Collegium Trilingue; from 1530-1537 he was student and teacher in Paris. A German Protestant says: "The organization of the college of Liège made such an impression on young Sturm that he adopted it even in some minute details as the model for his school in Strasburg." Similarly speaks Professor Ziegler.