of a shiver with fear? He praises Colet for his courage and zeal in the cause of the "ancient" theology as against the "new-fangled race of theologians, who spend their lives in mere arguments and sophistical quibbling." Not that he altogether condemns these studies, for he approves of every kind of study, [48] _Ep. ad Coletum_, v., 1263-1264. "but taken by themselves, with no admixture of more refined and ancient letters, they seem to make a man a conceited and disputatious fellow--whether they can ever make him a wise man, let others decide. For they seem to exhaust the mind with a kind of crude and barren subtlety; there is no sap in them, nor any real breath of life. "I am not speaking against learned and approved professors of theology, for I look up to them with the greatest respect, but against that mean and haughty herd of theologians who think all the writings of all authors are worth nothing compared to themselves. When you, Colet, went into the fight against this unassailable horde that, so far as in you lay, you might restore that ancient and pure theology, now overgrown with their thorns, to its early splendour and dignity, you took upon yourself, so help me God!--a task in many ways most admirable, most loyal to the name of Theology itself, most wholesome for all studious men and especially for this blooming University of Oxford--but, I don't conceal it, a task full of difficulty and of opposition. Yet you will overcome the difficulty with your learning and your industry, and your great soul can afford to overlook the opposition. There are, too, among those theologians not a few who are both willing and able to help such honest efforts as yours. Nay, there is no one who would not join hands with you, since there is not a doctor in this famous school who has not listened most attentively to your lectures on St. Paul, now going on for the third year.... "I am not wondering that you should take upon your shoulders a burden to which you may be equal, but that you call me, a man of no account whatever, to share in so great an enterprise. For you ask me--nay you urge upon me, that as you are lecturing upon Paul so I, by expounding the ancient Moses or the eloquent Isaiah, should strive to rekindle the studies of this school--chilled, as you say, by these long months of winter." He goes on to protest his unfitness for the task and especially to defend himself against the charge that he had given Colet reason to believe he might accept his suggestion.