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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II.?CAMBRIDGE GOSPELLERS. With the Cambridge Gospellers, of whom it is necessary next to speak, lay the real centre and heart of the movement?at least so far as it was a spiritual movement. To many of the favourers of the New Learning, just as to Ficino and his Academy, Plato had supplied a bridge, over which they had crossed from the Pagan to the Christian shore. The poet- philosopher, who denounced poets, reigned at Florence in the Academy, and among a yet more limited section at Oxford; but his influence was very small at Cambridge. The Cambridge Gospellers sat immediately at the feet of the Master himself. Here was the secret of their power, their success, and its permanence. Tyndale, who was soon to be the leader of the Reforming party, was thoroughly at one with them. A brief sketch of the religious condition of Cambridge at a period a little later than the proceedings at Oxford just referred to, will serve to introduce characters Avho played a conspicuous part in our early Reformation, and to exemplify their earnest efforts to promote amendment of faith and life. Foremost among the Cambridge Gospellers must be placed Thomas Bilney, Fellow of Trinity Hall. Short of stature, eminently abstemious in his habits, ' little Bilney, ' was remarkable for the austerity of his zealous piety. He was constant at the confessional. Fasts and vigils wore down his strength; pardons and masses drained his purse. Yet he had no peace of conscience. Erasmus had now left Cambridge, and in 1516 published at Basle his Greek Testament, with its new and clear Latin version; a bold innovation, for the monks held every syllable of the Vulgate to be inspired. Bilney purchased a copy, not so much because it was Christ's Gospel, as because the charm of the Latinity attracted him. But he soon pas...