Martin Luther,
conducted, no doubt, by a higher Providence, but in discourse of
reason, finding what a province he had undertaken against the Bishop
of Rome and the degenerate traditions of the Church, and finding his
own solitude, being in nowise aided by the opinions of his own time,
was enforced to awake all antiquity, and to call former times to his
succours to make a party against the present time. So that the
ancient authors, both in divinity and in humanity, which had long
time slept in libraries, began generally to be read and revolved.
This, by consequence, did draw on a necessity of a more exquisite
travail in the languages original, wherein those authors did write,
for the better understanding of those authors, and the better
advantage of pressing and applying their words. And thereof grew,
again, a delight in their manner of style and phrase, and an
admiration of that kind of writing, which was much furthered and
precipitated by the enmity and opposition that the propounders of
those primitive but seeming new opinions had against the schoolmen,
who were generally of the contrary part, and whose writings were
altogether in a differing style and form; taking liberty to coin and
frame new terms of art to express their own sense, and to avoid
circuit of speech, without regard to the pureness, pleasantness, and
(as I may call it) lawfulness of the phrase or word.
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