were opposed to it.  The early statutes of St. John’s College, Cambridge, forbade playing with dice or cards by members of the college at any time except Christmas, but excluded undergraduates even from the Christmas privilege.  In these sermons Latimer used the card-playing of the season for illustrations of spiritual truth drawn from the trump card in triumph, and the rules of the game of primero.  His homely parables enforced views of religious duty more in accordance with the mind of the Reformers than of those who held by the old ways.  The Prior of the Dominicans at Cambridge tried to answer Latimer’s sermon on the cards with an antagonistic sermon on the dice:  the orthodox Christian was to win by a throw of cinque and quatre—­the cinque, five texts to be quoted against Luther; and the quatre the four great doctors of the Church.  Latimer replied with vigour; others ranged themselves on one side or the other, and there was general battle in the University; but the King’s Almoner soon intervened with a letter commanding silence on both sides till the King’s pleasure was further declared.  The King’s good-will to Latimer was due, as the letter indicated, to the understanding that Latimer “favoured the King’s cause” in the question of divorce from Katherine of Arragon.

In March, 1530, Latimer was called to preach before Henry VIII., at Windsor.  The King then made Latimer his chaplain, and in the following year gave him the rectory of West Kington, in Wiltshire.  The new rector, soon accused of heresy, was summoned before the Bishop of London and before Convocation; was excommunicated and imprisoned, and absolved by special request of the King.  When Cranmer became Archbishop of Canterbury, Latimer returned into royal favour, and preached before the King on Wednesdays in Lent.  In 1535, when an Italian nominee of the Pope’s was deprived of the Bishopric of Worcester, Latimer was made his successor; but resigned in 1539, when the King, having virtually made himself Pope, dictated to a tractable parliament enforcement of old doctrines by an Act for Abolishing Diversity of Opinion.  From that time until the death of Henry VIII.  Latimer was in disgrace.

The accession of Edward vi. brought him again to the front, and the Sermon on the Plough, in this volume, is a famous example of his use of his power under Edward vi., as the greatest preacher of his time, in forwarding the Reformation of the Church, and of the lives of those who professed and called themselves Christians.  The rest of his story will be associated in another volume of this Library with a collection of his later sermons.

H. M.

SERMONS ON THE CARD.

THE TENOR AND EFFECT OF CERTAIN SERMONS MADE BY MASTER LATIMER IN CAMBRIDGE, ABOUT THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1529.