INTRODUCTION.

hoped to get more leisure for literary work. It is supposed that he prepared himself for the sacred office by entering, in mature life, upon the study of theology, and a curious story is told in connexion with his first reading of the New Testament, which, as it has been strangely misunderstood, may be worth giving in detail. The story rests solely on the authority of Sir John Cheke, Professor of Greek at Cambridge, in his letters on the pronunciation of Greek, addressed to Bishop Gardiner, at that time Chancellor of the University. Cheke seems to have been anxious to conciliate the Bishop, and at the same time, for some reason or other, to depreciate Linacre. He speaks of him as a learned person and a good physician, but one who should not venture out of his own province, and, he says, in power of rhetoric and popular expression far inferior to the episcopal correspondent to whom Cheke's letters were addressed.

He then tells the following story. Linacre when advanced in life, his health broken by study and disease, and near his end, took the New Testament in his hand for the first time, (although he was a priest,) and read the Gospel of St Matthew to the end of the 7th Chapter (that is to the end of the Sermon on the Mount). Having read it, he threw the volume away with all the strength he could muster, swearing "either this is not the Gospel or we are not Christians." It is probable that the striking contrast between the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount and the practice of the Christian World has inspired many readers with the same feeling, and it will continue to have the same effect on many more, though they may not happen to give vent to their surprise with the same petulance. Cheke seems to argue that it shewed some scepticism in Linacre or want of respect for the Scriptures. Selden has misunderstood the story still more strangely, imagining