Dr. Mitchell's anecdote is not accepted by Linacre's biographers generally, though it is copied by Dr. Payne, the writer of the article on Linacre in the (English) _Dictionary of National Biography_, who, however, discredits it somewhat. The story is founded on Sir John Cheke's {83} account of the conversion of Linacre. It is very doubtful, however, whether Linacre's deprecations of the actions of Christians had reference to anything more than the practice of false swearing so forcibly denounced in the Scriptures, which had apparently become frequent in his time. This is Selden's version of the story as quoted by Dr. Johnson, who was Linacre's well-known biographer. Sir John Cheke in his account seems to hint that this chance reading of the Scriptures represented the first occasion Linacre had ever taken of an opportunity to read the New Testament. Perhaps we are expected to believe that, following the worn-out Protestant tradition of the old Church's discouraging of the reading of the Bible, and of the extreme scarcity of copies of the Book, this was the first time he had ever had a good opportunity to read it. This, of course, is nonsense. Linacre's early education had been obtained at the school of the monastery of Christ Church at Canterbury, and the monastery schools all used the New Testament as a text-book, and as the offices of the day at which the students were required to attend contain these very passages from Matthew which Linacre is supposed to have read for the first time later in life, this idea is preposterous. Besides, Linacre, as one of the great scholars of his time, intimate friend of Sir Thomas More, of Dean Colet, and Erasmus, can scarcely be thought to find his first copy of the Bible only when advanced in years. This is {84} evidently a post-Reformation addition, part of the Protestant tradition with regard to the supposed suppression of the Scriptures in pre-Reformation days, which every one acknowledges now to be without foundation. Linacre, as many another before and since, seems only to have realized the true significance of the striking passages in Matthew after life's experiences and disappointments had made him take more seriously the clauses of the Sermon on the Mount. There is much in fifth, sixth, and seventh Matthew that might disturb the complacent equanimity of a man whose main objects in life, though pursued with all honorable unselfishness, had been the personal satisfaction of wide scholarship and success in his chosen profession.