Protestantism in England From the Times of Henry VIII - James Aitken Wylie

tuition which prevailed there, and possessed of a
large fortune, he resolved to travel, if haply he
might find in foreign universities a more rational
system of knowledge, and purer models of study.
He visited Italy, where he gave himself ardently in
the acquisition of the tongue of ancient Rome, in
company with Linacre, Grocyn, and William Lily,
his countrymen, who had preceded him thither,
drawn by their thirst for the new learning,
especially the Greek. The change which the study
of the classic writers had begun in Colet was
completed by the reading of the Scriptures; and
when he returned to England in 1497, the shackles
of the schoolmen had been rent from his mind, and
he was a discountenancer of the rites, the
austerities, and the image-worship of the still
dominant Church.[1] To the reading of the
Scriptures he added the study of the Fathers, who
furnished him with additional proofs and
arguments against the prevailing doctrines and
customs of the times, lie began a course of lectures
on the Epistles of St. Paul in his cathedral church;
and deeming his own labors all too little to dispel
the thick night that brooded over the land, he
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