While these works were accomplishing at Cologne and Worms, others were going on at Cambridge and Oxford. On the banks of the Rhine they were preparing the seed; in England they were drawing the furrows to receive it. The gospel produced a great agitation at Cambridge. Bilney, whom we may call the father of the English Reformation, since, being the first converted by the New Testament, he had brought to the knowledge of God the energetic Latimer, and so many other witnesses of the truth,--Bilney did not at that time put himself forward, like many of those who had listened to him: his vocation was prayer. Timid before men, he was full of boldness before God, and day and night called upon him for souls. But while he was kneeling in his closet, others were at work in the world. Among these Stafford was particularly remarkable. "Paul is risen from the dead," said many as they heard him. And in fact Stafford explained with so much life the true meaning of the words of the apostle and of the four evangelists,[555] that these holy men, whose faces had been so long hidden under the dense traditions of the schools,[556] reappeared before the youth of the university such as the apostolic times had beheld them. But it was not only their _persons_ (for that would have been a trifling matter), it was their _doctrine_ which Stafford laid before his hearers. While the schoolmen of Cambridge were declaring to their pupils a reconciliation which was not yet worked out, and telling them that pardon must be purchased by the works prescribed by the church, Stafford taught that redemption was _accomplished_, that the satisfaction offered by Jesus Christ was _perfect_; and he added, that popery having revived the _kingdom of the law_, God, by the Reformation, was now reviving the _kingdom of grace_. The Cambridge students, charmed by their master's teaching, greeted him with applause, and, indulging a little too far in their enthusiasm, said to one another as they left the lecture-room: "Which is the most indebted to the other? Stafford to Paul, who left him the holy epistles; or Paul to Stafford, who has resuscitated that apostle and his holy doctrines, which the middle ages had obscured?" [555] He set forth in his lectures the native sense. Thomas Becon, ii, p. 426. [556] Obscured through the darkness and mists of the papists. Ibid. [Sidenote: LATIMER'S PREACHING.]