gentleman was
careful to give his sons, whatever else he gave them, a sound soldier's
training. "He was diligent," says Latimer, "to teach me to shoot with the
bow: he taught me how to draw, how to lay my body in the bow--not to draw
with strength of arm, as other nations do, but with the strength of the
body. I had my bows bought me according to my age and strength; as I
increased in these, my bows were made bigger and bigger."[561] Under this
education, and in the wholesome atmosphere of the farmhouse, the boy
prospered well; and by and bye, showing signs of promise, he was sent to
school. When he was fourteen, the promises so far having been fulfilled,
his father transferred him to Cambridge.[562]

He was soon known at the university as a sober, hard-working student. At
nineteen, he was elected fellow of Clare Hall; at twenty, he took his
degree, and became a student in divinity, when he accepted quietly, like a
sensible man, the doctrines which he had been brought up to believe. At the
time when Henry VIII. was writing against Luther, Latimer was fleshing his
maiden sword in an attack upon Melancthon;[563] and he remained, he said,
till he was thirty, "in darkness and the shadow of death." About this time
he became acquainted with Bilney, whom he calls "the instrument whereby God
called him to knowledge." In Bilney, doubtless, he found a sound
instructor; but a careful reader of his sermons will see traces of a
teaching for which he was indebted to no human master. His deepest
knowledge was that which stole upon him unconsciously through the
experience of life and the world. His words are like the clear impression
of a seal; the account and the result of observations, taken first hand, on
the condition of the English men and women of his time, in all ranks and
classes, from the palace to the prison. He shows large acquaintance with
books; with the Bible, most of all; with patristic divinity and school
divinity; and history, sacred and profane: but if this had been all, he
would not have been the Latimer of the Reformation, and the Church of
England would not, perhaps, have been here to-day. Like the physician, to
whom a year of practical experience in a hospital teaches more than a life
of closest study, Latimer learnt the mental disorders of his age in the age
itself; and the secret of that art no other man, however good, however
wise, could have taught him. He was not an echo, but a voice; and he drew
his thoughts