Famous Men of the Renaissance & Reformation by Robert G. Shearer

“The biographies in this volume show the continuity between the Renaissance and the Reformation. The revival of learning which characterized the Renaissance led directly to the recovery of the tools and texts that the Reformers used to place the Bible in the language (and hands) of the people. It is an old saw, but true, that “Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched.”…We should admire them for their virtues and seek to imitate them, and take caution from their flaws and failures and seek to avoid them. That, after all, is the point of studying history.”