The Reformation had gained in Latimer a very different man from Bilney. He had not so much discernment and prudence perhaps, but he had more energy and eloquence. What Tyndale was to be for England by his writings, Latimer was to be by his discourses. The tenderness of his conscience, the warmth of his zeal, and the vivacity of his understanding, were enlisted in the service of Jesus Christ; and if at times he was carried too far by the liveliness of his wit, it only shows that the reformers were not _saints_, but sanctified men. "He was one of the first," says an historian, "who, in the days of king Henry VIII, set himself to preach the Gospel in the truth and simplicity of it."[494] He preached in Latin _ad clerum_, and in English _ad populum_. He boldly placed the law with its curses before his hearers, and then conjured them to flee towards the Saviour of the world.[495] The same zeal which he had employed in saying mass, he now employed in preaching the true sacrifice of Christ. He said one day:--"If one man had committed all the sins since Adam, you may be sure he should be punished with the same horror of death, in such a sort as all men in the world should have suffered.... Such was the pain Christ endured.... If our Saviour had committed all the sins of the world; all that I for my part have done, all that you for your part have done, and all that any man else hath done; if he had done all this himself, his agony that he suffered should have been no greater nor grievouser than it was.... Believe in Jesus Christ, and you shall overcome death.... But, alas!" said he at another time, "the devil, by the help of that Italian bishop, his chaplain, has laboured by all means that he might frustrate the death of Christ and the merits of his passion."[496] [494] Strype's Mem. iii, part i, p. 378. [495] Flying to him by an evangelical faith. Ibid. [496] Lat. Ser. p. 74. [Sidenote: WORKS OF CHARITY.] Thus began in British Christendom the preaching of the Cross. The Reformation was not the substitution of the catholicism of the first ages for the popery of the middle ages: it was a revival of the preaching of St. Paul, and thus it was that on hearing Latimer every one exclaimed with rapture: "Of a _Saul_, God has made him a very _Paul_."[497] [497] This was said by Ralph Morice, afterwards Cranmer's secretary. Strype, Eccl. Mem. iii, part i, p. 368.