“How far God fetches his purposes about!” is the contemplation of Bishop Hall on the manner of Saul’s call to the kingly office. “The asses of Kish, Saul’s father, are strayed away; what is that to the news of a kingdom? But God lays these small accidents for the ground of greater designs.”[227] The sickness at Cambridge, the moment at which it occurred, the trifle which determined Waltham above all places for the retreat of Cranmer, the casual sojourn of the king there for a single night, the house of all the houses to which his secretary and almoner were directed for their evening’s lodging, and the subject-matter of the conversation, incidents, most of them inconsiderable in themselves, and independent of one another, yet all conspiring to call out of obscurity probably the fittest, perhaps the only fit man in the whole kingdom, for superintending ecclesiastical affairs at a crisis so peculiar--this is altogether a combination of circumstances, which it may be philosophy to call a chapter of accidents, but which it is not superstition to ascribe to the finger of “a God that governs the earth.” With so splendid an instance before our eyes, that opinion can scarcely be treated with disrespect, which holds the call to the ministry to be in some degree, though certainly in a subordinate degree, external; to be the voice of events which have been so ordered as to guide the party to his novitiate, and to land him at last in the priestly office. But this by the way. Cranmer had been a hard student, and in the subjects of his study had kept pace with the times in which he lived. He began, where most scholars in those days ended, with Duns Scotus and the subtle doctors, a discipline which had at least the merit of making astute disputants; and, as Bishop Berkeley said of academical learning in general, might serve even when forgotten, like a crop when ploughed under, to improve and enrich the soil.[228] Escaped from the schools, he betook himself to the writings of Erasmus, for whom he seems ever to have entertained a strong personal regard, perhaps as being the author who first opened his eyes. Luther absorbed him in his turn; and now the controversy between that reformer and his opponents being serious, agitating matters no less than the fundamentals of the Christian faith (_agitur de vita et sanguine_), the appeal moreover being made to Scripture alone, Cranmer set himself resolutely to the examination of the word of God, that he might qualify himself for exercising a sound judgment on these high arguments; and of the patience, the learning, the discrimination, with which he did this, the Liturgy of our church (were there no other) would be an everlasting monument, in which, whoever will be at the pains of taking a prayer or a clause to pieces, will find occasion to wonder at the masterly knowledge of the Bible which the selection even of some single expression often betrays, so that