INTRODUCTION.

that Linacre referred only or chiefly to the prohibition of swearing. But looked at without prejudice Linacre's exclamation seems natural enough. It is well known that the Scholars of the renaissance rebirth of classical learning, before the time of Erasmus at least, were very little acquainted with the Scriptures in the original text, or even in the Latin Vulgate Version, which is said to have been avoided on account of its non-classical idioms. Now Linacre was a scholar and not a theologian. A theologian by profession either passes lightly over discrepancies such as these or else has already found such an explanation of them as is possible. But the spirit of scholarship and criticism is to take words in their true meaning and to view ideas by uncoloured light. Linacre's remark needs no other explanation than that he read the passage with the unbiassed judgment of a scholar.

Although it is clear that Linacre entered the Church under the patronage of Archbishop Warham he is said to have been ordained priest by the Bishop of London on Dec^r 22^nd 1520. The date of his entrance into deacon's orders is unknown. It has been conjectured that he received from Pope Leo the Tenth, his old schoolfellow, a dispensation from the necessity of passing through the inferior clerical degrees, and that this may have been the kindness for which he expresses his gratitude in the dedication of the present volume. Be this as it may, he received from Warham in 1509 his first preferment to the Rectory of Merstham in Kent, which he resigned in a little more than a month from his collation. In the same year he received the Prebend of Easton in Gardano in the Cathedral of Wells, and in the same year the living of Hawkhurst, in Kent, which he held till the year 1524. Further marks of favour were bestowed upon him in 1517, when he was made Canon and Prebendary of Westminster, and in 1518 when he