Foreign writers have been amused with the information, that many of the Scottish clergy affirmed, “that Martin Luther had lately composed a wicked book called the New Testament; but that they, for their part, would adhere to the Old Testament.” Perizonii Hist. Seculi xvi. p. 233. Gerdesii Histor. Reform. tom. iv. p. 314. Buchanani Oper. i. 291. Ignorant, however, as our clergy were, they were not more illiterate than many on the Continent. A foreign monk, declaiming one day in the pulpit against Lutherans and {345} Zuinglians, said to his audience: “A new language was invented some time ago, called Greek, which has been the mother of all these heresies. A book is printed in this language, called the New Testament, which contains many dangerous things. Another language is now forming, the Hebrew; whoever learns it immediately becomes a Jew.” No wonder, after this, that the commissioners of the senate of Lucern should have confiscated the works of Aristotle, Plato, and some of the Greek poets, which they found in the library of a friend of Zuinglius, concluding, that every book printed in that language must be infected with Lutheranism. J. von Mullers Schw. Gesch. Hess, Life of Ulrich Zuingle, p. 213. To return to the seminary at Montrose: it was kept up, by the public spirit of its patron, until the establishment of the Reformation. Some years before that event, the celebrated linguist, Andrew Melville, received his education at this school, under Pierre de Marsiliers, a Frenchman. And he had made such proficiency in Greek, when he entered the university of St Andrews, about the year 1559, that he was able to read Aristotle in the original language, “which even his masters themselves understood not.” Life of Andrew Melville, p. 2, in Wodrow’s MSS. Bibl. Coll. Glas. vol. i. and James Melville’s Diary, p. 32. For, although the logics, ethics, &c. of Aristotle, were then read in the colleges, it was in a Latin translation. “The regent of St Leonard’s,” says James Melville, “tauld me of my uncle Mr Andro Melvill, whom he knew, in the tyme of his cours in the new collag, to use the Greik logicks of Aristotle, quhilk was a wonder to them, he was so fyne a scholar, and of sic expectation.” MS. Diary, p. 25.