Page:The Church of England, its catholicity and continuity.djvu/84

 was another aid in bringing about the change which took place in our country. Pamphlets expressing the opinions of his party came across the water, and they were read and many of their sentiments endorsed by our people. The movement which John Wycliffe started, to which I briefly referred last week, the activity of his followers, the Lollards, who went throughout the country preaching against the iniquities of many of the clergy and the friars, prepared the minds of the nation for the change about to come.

There was one more cause of the Reformation, and by no means the least important one. That was the movement known as the Revival of Learning. Before the Reformation the ignorance of the people was astounding. Even priests who had the cure of souls were so lazy and indolent that many of them could not translate the Latin services which they so improperly rendered. Some time before the Reformation men began to travel to inquire into the customs of distant countries. Thus the mind was aroused and the understanding quickened. Men flocked to Italy to find out all they could about the old classic writers. There was a mania for discovering old manuscripts of the Greek and Latin authors. Florence became the home of this intellectual revival. Such men as Grocyn, Linacre and Colet, came to England in large numbers. They went to the Universities and lectured to the students there. Thus they aroused the nation's intelligence. Colet became a master in the study of Greek, and made the desire to know the Greek New Testament the aim of his scholarship. He lectured at Oxford on St. Paul's Epistles with such earnestness that as