Page:The History of the Church & Manor of Wigan part 1.djvu/94

 in a neglect or total ignorance of the sacred writings; and when he took up the New Testament for the first time, and came to that part of St. Matthew's Gospel which contains the Lord's Sermon on the Mount, he had no sooner read the command "Swear not at all" than he threw away the book with violence, exclaiming, "either this is not the Gospel or we are not Christians." Fuller, when relating the story, says the speech is capable of "a charitable sense, as taxing men's practice so much different from God's precepts." If the story has any foundation of truth this is probably the proper interpretation of it : but the whole statement looks like invention ; and it is rendered unlikely by Linacre's known habits of moderation, and by his many ecclesiastical friendships, which, with the single exception of Dean Colet, were preserved without interruption till his death. This story rests on the sole authority of Sir John Cheke, Professor of Greek at Cambridge, in a letter to Bishop Gardiner, Chancellor of the University, written in 1555, many years after Linacre's decease. And the object seems to have been to flatter Gardiner at the expense of Linacre, whom Cheke may have regarded as a rival Greek scholar.

It is not clear when, or from whom, Linacre received his deacon's orders; but I should suppose that he was ordained in or before the year 1509; for on the 23rd October of that year he was collated by the Primate, Archbishop Warham, to the Rectory of Mersham, in Kent, which, however, he resigned within little more than a month: and on the 14th September of the same year he had been installed prebend of Easton in Gardano in the cathedral church of Wells.

In the following year he was admitted to the vicarage of