Agricola, who governed once here for Caesar, preferred the natural wits
of Britain before the laboured studies of the French. Nor is it for
nothing that the grave and frugal Transylvanian sends out yearly from
as far as the mountainous borders of Russia, and beyond the Hercynian
wilderness, not their youth, but their staid men, to learn our language
and our theologic arts.

Yet that which is above all this, the favour and the love of Heaven,
we have great argument to think in a peculiar manner propitious and
propending towards us. Why else was this nation chosen before any other,
that out of her, as out of Sion, should be proclaimed and sounded forth
the first tidings and trumpet of Reformation to all Europe? And had it
not been the obstinate perverseness of our prelates against the divine
and admirable spirit of Wickliff, to suppress him as a schismatic and
innovator, perhaps neither the Bohemian Huns and Jerome, no nor the name
of Luther or of Calvin, had been ever known: the glory of reforming all
our neighbours had been completely ours. But now, as our obdurate clergy
have with violence demeaned the matter, we are become hitherto the
latest and the backwardest scholars, of whom God offered to have made
us the teachers. Now once again by all concurrence of signs, and by
the general instinct of holy and devout men, as they daily and solemnly
express their thoughts, God is decreeing to begin some new and great
period in his Church, even to the reforming of Reformation itself: what
does he then but reveal himself to his servants, and as his manner is,
first to his Englishmen? I say, as his manner is, first to us, though we
mark not the method of his counsels, and are unworthy.

Behold now this vast city: a city of refuge, the mansion house of
liberty, encompassed and surrounded with his protection; the shop of war
hath not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates