turdy
good sense of the man shook off the pedantry of the schools as well as the
subtlety of the theologian. He had little turn for speculation, and in the
religious changes of the day we find him constantly lagging behind his
brother reformers. But he had the moral earnestness of a Jewish prophet,
and his denunciations of wrong had a prophetic directness and fire. "Have
pity on your soul," he cried to Henry, "and think that the day is even at
hand when you shall give an account of your office, and of the blood that
hath been shed by your sword." His irony was yet more telling than his
invective. "I would ask you a strange question," he said once at Paul's
Cross to a ring of Bishops; "who is the most diligent prelate in all
England, that passeth all the rest in doing of his office? I will tell
you. It is the Devil! of all the pack of them that have cure, the Devil
shall go for my money; for he ordereth his business. Therefore, you
unpreaching prelates, learn of the Devil to be diligent in your office. If
you will not learn of God, for shame learn of the Devil." But Latimer was
far from limiting himself to invective. His homely humour breaks in with
story and apologue; his earnestness is always tempered with good sense;
his plain and simple style quickens with a shrewd mother-wit. He talks to
his hearers as a man talks to his friends, telling stories such as we have
given of his own life at home, or chatting about the changes and chances
of the day with a transparent simplicity and truth that raises even his
chat into grandeur. His theme is always the actual world about him, and in
his simple lessons of loyalty, of industry, of pity for the poor, he
touches upon almost every subject from the plough to the throne. No such
preaching had been heard in England before his day, and with the growth of
his fame grew the danger of persecution. There were moments when, bold as
he was, Latimer's heart failed him. "If I had not trust that God will help
me," he wrote once, "I think the ocean sea would have divided my Lord of
London and me by this day." A citation for heresy at last brought the
danger home. "I intend," he wrote with his peculiar medley of humour and
pathos, "to make merry with my parishioners this Christmas, for all the
sorrow, lest perchance I may never return to them again." But he was saved
throughout by the steady protection of the Court. Wolsey upheld him
against the threats of the Bishop of Ely; Henry made him his