The Oxford Reformers: John Colet, Erasmus, and Thomas More
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Title: The Oxford Reformers: John Colet, Erasmus, and Thomas More
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OXFORD REFORMERS: JOHN COLET, ERASMUS, AND THOMAS MORE ***
JOHN COLET, ERASMUS, AND THOMAS MORE.
_By the same Author._
THE ENGLISH VILLAGE COMMUNITY Examined in its Relations to the Manorial
and Tribal Systems, &c. With 13 Maps and Plates. 8vo. 16_s._
THE TRIBAL SYSTEM IN WALES: Being Part of an Inquiry into the Structure
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THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION (_Epochs of Modern History_). With 4
Maps and 12 Diagrams. Fcp. 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._
LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.
London, New York, and Bombay.
THE OXFORD REFORMERS
JOHN COLET, ERASMUS, AND THOMAS MORE.
_BEING A HISTORY OF THEIR FELLOW-WORK._
BY FREDERIC SEEBOHM.
‘Tu interea patienter audi; ac nos ambo, collidentibus
inter se silicibus, si quis ignis excutiatur, eum avide
apprehendamus. _Veritatem_ enim quærimus, non opinionis
offensionem....’ (_Colet_, Eras. Op. v. p. 1292).
‘Take no heed what thing many men do, but what thing the
_very law of nature_, what thing _very reason_, what thing
_Our Lord himself_ showeth thee to be done’ (_Pico della
Mirandola_, translated by More: More’s English Works, p.
13).
‘Cur sic arctamus Christi professionem quam Ille latissime
volnit patere?’ (_Erasmus_, Letter to Volzius, prefixed to
the ‘Enchiridion’).
REPRINTED FROM THE THIRD EDITION.
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY.
1896.
All rights reserved.
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
Since this book was written, years ago, the works of Dean Colet have one
after another been placed within reach of the public, ably edited by my
friend Mr. Lupton, and now I understand that a biography by the same
competent hand is also in the press.
Under these circumstances I have had some hesitation in allowing a Third
Edition to be printed. I have yielded, however, to Mr. Lupton’s pleading
that this history of the fellow-work of the three friends, imperfect as it
always was, and antiquated as it has now become, may live a little longer.
F. S.
THE HERMITAGE, HITCHIN: _March 8, 1887_.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
Two circumstances have enabled me to make this Second Edition more
complete, and I trust more correct, than its predecessor.
First: the remarkable discovery by Mr. W. Aldis Wright, on the blank
leaves of a MS. in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, of an
apparently contemporary family register recording, _inter alia_, the date
of the marriage of Sir Thomas More’s parents, and of the birth of Sir
Thomas More himself (see Appendix C), has given the clue, so long sought
for in vain, to the chronology of More’s early life. It has also made it
needful to alter slightly the title of this work.
Secondly: the interesting MSS. of Colet’s, on the ‘Hierarchies of
Dionysius,’ found by Mr. Lupton in the library of St. Paul’s School, and
recently published by him with a translation and valuable
introduction,[1] have supplied a missing link in the chain of Colet’s
mental history, which has thrown much fresh light, as well upon his
connection with the Neo-Platonists of Florence, as upon the position
already taken by him at Oxford, before the arrival of Erasmus.
The greater part of the First Edition was already in the hands of the
public, when I became aware of the importance of this newly discovered
information; but, in October last, I withdrew the remaining copies from
sale, as it seemed to me that it would hardly be fair, under the
circumstances, to allow them to pass out of my hands. They have since been
destroyed.
In publishing this revised and enlarged edition, I wish especially to
tender my thanks to Mr. Lupton for his invaluable assistance in its
revision, and for the free use he has throughout allowed me to make of the
results of his own researches.
I have also to thank the Librarian of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, for the
loan of a beautiful copy of Colet’s MS. on ‘I. Corinthians;’ and Mr.
Bradshaw, for kindly obtaining for me a transcript of the MS. on ‘Romans’
in the University Library.
At Mr. Bradshaw’s suggestion I have added, in the Appendix, a catalogue of
the early editions of the works of Erasmus in my collection. It will at
least serve as evidence of the wide circulation obtained by these works
during the lifetime of their author.
HITCHIN: _May 10, 1869_.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
Some portions of this History were published in a somewhat condensed form
in the course of last year in the ‘Fortnightly Review,’ and I have to
thank the Editor for the permission to withdraw further portions, although
already in type, in order that the publication of this volume might not be
delayed.[2]
Having regard to the extreme inaccuracy of the dates of the letters of
Erasmus,[3] the conflicting nature of the evidence relating to the
chronology of More’s early life,[4] and the scantiness of the materials
for anything like a continuous biography of Colet, I should have
undertaken a difficult task had I attempted in this volume, even so far as
it goes, to give anything approaching to an exhaustive biography of Colet,
Erasmus, and More. But my object has not been to write the biography of
any one of them. I have rather endeavoured to trace their _joint_-history
and to point out the character of their _fellow-work_. And with regard to
the latter the evidence is so full, so various, and so consistent as to
leave, I think, little room for misapprehension, either as to whether
their work was indeed _fellow-work_, or as to the general spirit and scope
of the work itself.
I gladly take this opportunity of tendering my best thanks to those who
have aided me in this undertaking.
My warmest thanks are due to the Rev. J. S. Brewer, M.A., as well for the
invaluable aid afforded by his Calendars of the Letters, &c. of Henry
VIII., and for the loan of the proof-sheets of the forthcoming volume, as
for _the revision of the greater part of my translations_; also to Mr.
Gairdner for his ever ready assistance at the Public Record Office; to Dr.
Edward Boehmer, of the University of Halle, for his aid in the collection
of many of the early editions of works of Erasmus quoted in this volume;
to the Senate and the late Librarian of the Cambridge University Library
for the loan of the volume of MSS. marked Gg. 4, 26; and to Mr. Henry
Bradshaw, of King’s College, Cambridge, for much valuable assistance, most
courteously rendered, in the examination of this and other manuscripts at
Cambridge. I have also to thank the Rev. J. H. Lupton, of St. Paul’s
School, for the description given in Appendix C.[5] of a manuscript of
Colet’s in the Library of St. Paul’s School which I had overlooked, and
which I am happy to find is likely soon to be printed by him.
In conclusion, I cannot refrain from adding a tribute of affectionate
regard for the memory of two of my friends--the late Mr. William Tanner of
Bristol, and the late Mr. B. B. Wiffen of Woburn--of whose interest in the
progress of this work I have received many proofs, and of whose kindly
criticism I have gratefully availed myself.
HITCHIN: _March 30, 1867_.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
1. John Colet returns from Italy to Oxford (1496) 1
2. The Rise of the New Learning (1453-92) 5
3. Colet’s previous History (1496) 14
4. Thomas More, another Oxford Student (1492-6) 23
5. Colet first hears of Erasmus (1496) 27
CHAPTER II.
1. Colet’s lectures on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (1496-7?) 29
2. Visit from a Priest during the Winter Vacation (1496-7?) 42
3. Colet on the Mosaic Account of the Creation (1497?) 46
4. Colet studies afresh the Pseudo-Dionysian Writings (1497?) 60
5. Colet lectures on ‘I. Corinthians’ (1497?) 78
6. Grocyn’s Discovery (1498?) 90
CHAPTER III.
1. Erasmus comes to Oxford (1498) 94
2. Table-talk on the Sacrifice of Cain and Abel (1498?) 97
3. Conversation between Colet and Erasmus on the Schoolmen
(1498 or 1499) 102
4. Erasmus falls in love with Thomas More (1498) 113
5. Discussion between Erasmus and Colet on ‘The Agony in the
Garden,’ and on the Inspiration of the Scriptures (1499) 116
6. Correspondence between Colet and Erasmus on the
Intention of Erasmus to leave Oxford (1499-1500) 126
7. Erasmus leaves Oxford and England (1500) 133
CHAPTER IV.
1. Colet made Doctor and Dean of St. Paul’s (1500-5) 137
2. More called to the Bar--In Parliament--Offends Henry
VII.--The Consequences (1500-1504) 142
3. Thomas More in Seclusion from Public Life (1504-5) 146
4. More studies Pico’s Life and Works--His Marriage (1505) 151
5. How it had fared with Erasmus (1500-5) 160
6. The ‘Enchiridion,’ &c. of Erasmus (1501-5) 173
CHAPTER V.
1. Second Visit of Erasmus to England (1505-6) 180
2. Erasmus again leaves England for Italy (1506) 183
3. Erasmus visits Italy and returns to England (1507-10) 186
4. More returns to Public Life on the Accession of Henry VIII.
(1509-10) 189
5. Erasmus writes the ‘Praise of Folly’ while resting at More’s
House (1510 or 1511) 193
CHAPTER VI.
1. Colet founds St. Paul’s School (1510) 206
2. His Choice of Schoolbooks and Schoolmasters (1511) 215
CHAPTER VII.
1. Convocation for the Extirpation of Heresy (1512) 222
2. Colet is charged with Heresy (1512) 249
3. More in trouble again (1512) 255
CHAPTER VIII.
1. Colet preaches against the Continental Wars--The First
Campaign (1512-13) 258
2. Colet’s Sermon to Henry VIII. (1513) 262
3. The Second Campaign of Henry VIII. (1513) 267
4. Erasmus visits the Shrine of our Lady of Walsingham (1513) 273
CHAPTER IX.
1. Erasmus leaves Cambridge, and meditates leaving England
(1513-14) 276
2. Erasmus and the Papal Ambassador (1514) 282
3. Parting Intercourse between Erasmus and Colet (1514) 284
CHAPTER X.
1. Erasmus goes to Basle to print his New Testament (1514) 294
2. Erasmus returns to England--His Satire upon Kings (1515) 306
3. Returns to Basle to finish his Works--Fears of the Orthodox
Party (1515) 312
CHAPTER XI.
1. The ‘Novum Instrumentum’ completed--What it really was
(1516) 320
CHAPTER XII.
1. More immersed in Public Business (1515) 337
2. Colet’s Sermon on the Installation of Cardinal Wolsey
(1515) 343
3. More’s ‘Utopia’ (1515) 346
4. The ‘Institutio Principis Christiani’ of Erasmus (1516) 365
5. More completes his ‘Utopia’--the Introductory Book (1516) 378
CHAPTER XIII.
1. What Colet thought of the ‘Novum Instrumentum’ (1516) 391
2. Reception of the ‘Novum Instrumentum’ in other Quarters
(1516) 398
3. Martin Luther reads the ‘Novum Instrumentum’ (1516) 402
4. The ‘Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum’ (1516-17) 407
5. The ‘Pythagorica’ and ‘Cabalistica’ of Reuchlin (1517) 411
6. More pays a Visit to Coventry (1517?) 414
CHAPTER XIV.
1. The Sale of Indulgences (1517-18) 419
2. More drawn into the Service of Henry VIII.--Erasmus leaves
Germany for Basle (1518) 427
CHAPTER XV.
1. Erasmus arrives at Basle--His Labours there (1518) 434
2. The Second Edition of the New Testament (1518-19) 442
3. Erasmus’s Health gives way (1518) 455
CHAPTER XVI.
1. Erasmus does not die (1518) 457
2. More at the Court of Henry VIII. (1518) 458
3. The Evening of Colet’s Life (1518-19) 461
4. More’s Conversion attempted by the Monks (1519) 470
5. Erasmus and the Reformers of Wittemberg (1519) 476
6. Election of Charles V. to the Empire (1519) 482
7. The Hussites of Bohemia (1519) 484
8. More’s Domestic Life (1519) 497
9. Death of Colet (1519) 503
10. Conclusion 505
APPENDICES.
A. Extracts from MS. Gg. 4, 26, in the Cambridge University
Library, Translations of which are given at pp. 37, 38 of
this Work 511
B. Extracts from MS. on ‘I. Corinthians.’--Emmanuel College
MS. 3. 3. 12 513
C. On the Date of More’s Birth 521
D. Ecclesiastical Titles and Preferments of Dean Colet, in
Order of Time 529
E. Catalogue of early Editions of the Works of Erasmus in my
possession 530
F. Editions of Works of Sir Thomas More in my Possession 542
INDEX 545
THE OXFORD REFORMERS: COLET, ERASMUS, AND MORE.
CHAPTER I.
I. JOHN COLET RETURNS FROM ITALY TO OXFORD (1496).
[Sidenote: John Colet announces lectures on St. Paul’s Epistles.]
It was probably in Michaelmas Term of 1496[6] that the announcement was
made to doctors and students of the University of Oxford that John Colet,
a late student, recently returned from Italy, was about to deliver a
course of public and gratuitous lectures in exposition of St. Paul’s
Epistles.
[Sidenote: Only graduates in Theology might lecture on the Bible.]
This was an event of no small significance and perhaps of novelty in the
closing years of that last of the Middle Ages; not only because the
Scriptures for some generations had been practically ignored at the
Universities, but still more so because the would-be lecturer had not as
yet entered deacon’s orders,[7] nor had obtained, or even tried to obtain,
any theological degree.[8] It is true that he had passed through the
regular academical course at Oxford, and was entitled, as a Master of
Arts, to lecture upon any other subject.[9] But a degree in Arts did not,
it would seem, entitle the graduate to lecture upon the Bible.[10]
It does not perhaps follow from this, that Colet was guilty of any
flagrant breach of university statutes, which, as a graduate in Arts, he
must have sworn to obey. The very extent to which real study of the
Scriptures had become obsolete at Oxford, may possibly suggest that even
the statutory restrictions on Scripture lectures may have become obsolete
also.[11]
Before the days of Wiclif, the Bible had been free, and Bishop
Grosseteste could urge Oxford students to devote their _best morning
hours_ to Scripture lectures.[12] But an unsuccessful revolution ends in
tightening the chains which it ought to have broken. During the fifteenth
century the Bible was _not_ free. And Scripture lectures, though still
retaining a nominal place in the academical course of theological study,
were thrown into the background by the much greater relative importance of
the lectures on ‘the Sentences.’ What Biblical lectures were given were
probably of a very formal character.[13]
[Sidenote: Commencement of a new movement at Oxford.]
The announcement by Colet of this course of lectures on St. Paul’s
Epistles was in truth, so far as can be traced, the first overt act in a
movement commenced at Oxford in the direction of practical Christian
reform--a movement, some of the results of which, had they been gifted
with prescience, might well have filled the minds of the Oxford doctors
with dismay.
They could not indeed foresee that those very books of ‘the Sentences,’
over which they had pored so intently for so many years, in order to
obtain the degree of Master in Theology, and at which students were still
patiently toiling with the same object in view--they could not foresee
that, within forty years, these very books would ‘be utterly banished from
Oxford,’ ignominiously ‘nailed up upon posts’ as waste paper, their loose
leaves strewn about the quadrangles until some sportsman should gather
them up and thread them on a line to keep the deer within the neighbouring
woods.[14] They could not, indeed, foresee the end of the movement then
only beginning, but still, the announcement of Colet’s lectures was likely
to cause them some uneasiness. They may well have asked, whether, if the
exposition of the Scriptures were to be really revived at Oxford, so
dangerous a duty should not be restricted to those duly authorised to
discharge it? Was every stripling who might travel as far as Italy and
return infected with the ‘new learning’ to be allowed to set up himself as
a theological teacher, without graduating in divinity, and without waiting
for decency’s sake for the bishop’s ordination?
On the other hand, any Oxford graduate choosing to adopt so irregular a
course, must have been perfectly aware that it would be one likely to stir
up opposition, and even ill-will,[15] amongst the older divines; and it
maybe presumed that he hardly would have ventured upon such a step without
knowing that there were at the university others ready to support him.
II. THE RISE OF THE NEW LEARNING (1453-92).
[Sidenote: The old and new school of thought.]
In all ages, more or less, there is a new school of thought rising up
under the eyes of an older school of thought. And probably in all ages the
men of the old school regard with some little anxiety the ways of the men
of the new school. Never is it more likely to be so than at an epoch of
sharp transition, like that on which the lot of these Oxford doctors had
been cast.
[Sidenote: An age of progress and transition.]
[Sidenote: Advance of Infidel arms in Europe.]
We sometimes speak as though our age were _par excellence_ the age of
progress. _Theirs_ was much more so if we duly consider it. The youth and
manhood of some of them had been spent in days which may well have seemed
to be the latter days of Christendom. They had seen Constantinople taken
by the Turks. The final conquest of Christendom by the infidel was a
possibility which had haunted all their visions of the future. Were not
Christian nations driven up into the north-western extremity of the known
world, a wide pathless ocean lying beyond? Had not the warlike creed of
Mahomet steadily encroached upon Christendom, century by century,
stripping her first of her African churches, from thence fighting its way
northward into Spain? Had it not maintained its foothold in Spain’s
fairest provinces for seven hundred years? And from the East was it not
steadily creeping over Europe, nearer and nearer to Venice and Rome, in
spite of all that crusades could do to stop its progress? If, though
little more than half the age of Christianity, it had already, as they
reckoned it had, drawn into its communion five times[16] as many votaries
as there were Christians left, was it a groundless fear that now in these
latter days it might devour the remaining sixth? What could hinder it?
[Sidenote: Internal weakness of the Church.]
A Spartan resistance on the part of united Christendom perhaps might. But
Christendom was not united, nor capable of Spartan discipline. Her
internal condition seemed to show signs almost of approaching dissolution.
The shadow of the great Papal schism still brooded over the destinies of
the Church. That schism had been ended only by a revolution which, under
the guidance of Gerson, had left the Pope the constitutional instead of
the absolute monarch of the Church. The great heresies of the preceding
century had, moreover, not yet been extinguished. The very names of Wiclif
and Huss were still names of terror. Lollardy had been crushed, but it was
not dead. Everywhere the embers of schism and revolution were still
smouldering underneath, ready to break out again, in new fury, who could
tell how soon?
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Defeat of the Moors in Spain, and discovery of America.]
It was in the ears of this apparently doomed generation that the double
tidings came of the discovery of the Terra Nova in the West, and of the
expulsion of the infidel out of Spain.
The ice of centuries suddenly was broken. The universal despondency at
once gave way before a spirit of enterprise and hope; and it has been well
observed, men began to congratulate each other that their lot had been
cast upon an age in which such wonders were achieved.
Even the men of the old school could appreciate these facts in a fashion.
The defeat of the Moors was to them a victory to the Church. The discovery
of the New World extended her dominion. They gloried over both.
But these outward facts were but the index to an internal upheaving of the
mind of Christendom, to which they were blind. The men who were guiding
the great external revolution--reformers in their way--were blindly
stamping out the first symptoms of this silent upheaving. Gerson, while
carrying reform over the heads of Popes, and deposing them to end the
schism or to preserve the unity of the Church, was at the same moment
using all his influence to crush Huss and Jerome of Prague. Queen Isabella
and Ximenes, Henry VII. and Morton, while sufficiently enlightened to
pursue maritime discovery, to reform after a fashion the monasteries under
their rule, and ready even to combine to reform the morals of the Pope
himself in order to avert the dreaded recurrence of a schism,[17] were not
eager to pursue these purposes without the sanction of Papal bulls, and
without showing their zeal for the Papacy by crushing out free thought
with an iron heel and zealously persecuting heretics, whether their faith
were that of the Moor, the Lollard, or the Jew.
[Sidenote: The revival of learning.]
The fall of Constantinople, which had sounded almost like the death-knell
of Christendom, had proved itself in truth the chief cause of her revival.
The advance of the Saracens upon Europe had already told upon the European
mind. The West has always had much to learn from the East. It was, for
instance, by translation from Arabic versions that Aristotle had gained
such influence over those very same scholastic minds to which his native
Greek was an abomination.
This further triumph of infidel arms also influenced Christian thought.
Eastern languages and Eastern philosophies began to be studied afresh in
the West. Exiles who had fled into Italy had brought with them their
Eastern lore. The invention of printing had come just in time to aid the
revival of learning. The printing press was pouring out in clear and
beautiful type new editions of the Greek and Latin classics. Art and
science with literature sprang up once more into life in Italy; and to
Italy, and especially to Florence, which, under the patronage of the
splendid court of Lorenzo de’ Medici, seemed to form the most attractive
centre, students from all nations eagerly thronged.
[Sidenote: Its effect on religion. Revival of Neo-Platonism.]
It was of necessity that the sudden reproduction of the Greek philosophy
and the works of the older Neo-Platonists in Italy should sooner or later
produce a new crisis in religion. A thousand years before, Christianity
and Neo-Platonism had been brought into the closest contact. Christianity
was then in its youth--comparatively pure--and in the struggle for mastery
had easily prevailed. Not that Neo-Platonism was indeed a mere phantom
which vanished and left no trace behind it. By no means. Through the
pseudo-Dionysian writings it not only influenced profoundly the theology
of mediæval mystics, but also entered largely even into the Scholastic
system. It was thus absorbed into Christian theology though lost as a
philosophy.
[Sidenote: The Platonic Academy, Ficino.]
Now, after the lapse of a thousand years, the same battle had to be fought
again. But with this terrible difference; that now Christianity, in the
impurest form it had ever assumed--a grotesque perversion of
Christianity--had to cope with the purest and noblest of the Greek
philosophies. It was, therefore, almost a matter of course that, under the
patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the Platonic Academy under Marsilio
Ficino should carry everything before it. Whether the story were literally
true of Ficino himself or not, that he kept a lamp burning in his chamber
before a bust of Plato, as well as before that of the Virgin, it was at
least symbolically true of the most accomplished minds of Florence.
[Sidenote: Plato and Christianity.]
Questions which had slept since the days of Julian and his successors were
discussed again under Sixtus IV. and Innocent VIII. The leading minds of
Italy were once more seeking for a reconciliation between Plato and
Christianity in the works of the pseudo-Dionysius, Macrobius, Plotinus,
Proclus, and other Neo-Platonists. There was the same anxious endeavour,
as a thousand years earlier, to fuse all philosophies into one. Plato and
Aristotle must be reconciled, as well as Christianity and Plato. The old
world was becoming once more the possession of the new. It was felt to be
the recovery of a lost inheritance, and everything of antiquity, whether
Greek, Roman, Jewish, Persian, or Arabian, was regarded as a treasure. It
was the fault of the Christian Church if the grotesque form of
Christianity held up by her to a reawakening world seemed less pure and
holy than the aspirations of Pagan philosophers. It would be by no merit
of hers, but solely by its own intrinsic power, if Christianity should
retain its hold upon the mind of Europe, in spite of its ecclesiastical
defenders.
Christianity brought into disrepute by the conduct of professed
Christians, was compelled to rest as of old upon its own intrinsic merits,
to stand the test of the most searching scientific criticisms which
Florentine philosophers were able to apply to it. Men versed in Plato and
Aristotle were not without some notion of the value of intrinsic evidence,
and the methods of inductive enquiry. Ficino himself thought it well,
discarding the accustomed scholastic interpreters, to turn the light of
his Platonic lamp upon the Christian religion. From his work, ‘_De
Religione Christianâ_,’ dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici, and written in
1474, some notion may be gained of the method and results of his
criticism. That its nature should be rightly understood is important in
connection with the history of the Oxford Reformers.
[Sidenote: The _De Religione Christianâ_ of Ficino.]
Ficino commences his argument by demonstrating that _religion_ is natural
to man; and having, on Platonic authority, pointed out the truth of the
one common religion, and that all religions have something of good in
them, he turns to the Christian religion in particular. Its truth he tries
to prove by a chain of reasoning of which the following are some of the
links.
[Sidenote: Argument of Ficino in support of Christianity.]
He first shows that ‘the disciples of Jesus were not deceivers;’[18] and
he supports this by examining, in a separate chapter, ‘in what spirit the
disciples of Christ laboured;’[19] concluding, after a careful analysis of
the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles, that they did not seek their
_own_ advantage or honour but ‘the glory of _Christ_ alone.’ Then he shows
that ‘the disciples of Christ were not _deceived_ by anyone,’[20] and that
the Christian religion was founded, not in human wisdom, but ‘in the
wisdom and power of God;’[21] that Christ was ‘no astrologer,’ but
‘derived his authority from God.’[22] He adduced further the evidence of
miracles, in which he had no difficulty in believing, for he gave two
instances of miracles which had occurred in Florence only four years
previously, and in which he declared to Lorenzo de’ Medici, that,
philosopher as he was, he believed.[23] After citing the testimony of some
Gentile writers, and of the Coran of the Mahometans, and discussing in the
light of Plato, Zoroaster, and Dionysius, the doctrine of the ‘logos,’ and
the fitness of the incarnation, he showed that the result of the coming of
Christ was that men are drawn to love with their whole heart a God who in
his immense love had himself become man.[24] After dwelling on the way in
which Christ lightened the burden of sin,[25] on the errors he dispelled,
the truths he taught,[26] and the example he set,[27] Ficino proceeds in
two short chapters to adduce the testimony of the ‘Sibyls.’[28] This was
natural to a writer whose bias it was to regard as genuine whatever could
be proved to be ancient. But it is only fair to state that he relies much
more fully and discusses at far greater length the prophecies of the
Ancient Hebrew prophets,[29] vindicating the Christian rendering of
certain passages in the old Testament against the Jews, who accused the
Christians of having perverted and depraved them.[30] He concludes by
asserting, that if there be much in Christianity which surpasses human
comprehension, this is a proof of its divine character rather than
otherwise. These are his final words. ‘If these things be divine, they
must exceed the capacity of any human mind. Faith (as Aristotle has it) is
the foundation of knowledge. By faith alone (as the Platonists prove) we
ascend to God. “I believed (said David) and therefore have I spoken.”
Believing, therefore, and approaching the fountain of truth and goodness
we shall drink in a wise and blessed life.’[31]
[Sidenote: Christianity a thing of the heart.]
Thus was the head of the Platonic Academy at Florence turning a critical
eye upon Christianity, viewing it very possibly too much in the light of
the lamp kept continually burning before the bust of Plato, but still, I
think, honestly endeavouring, upon its own intrinsic evidence and by
inductive methods, to establish a reasonable belief in its divine
character in minds sceptical of ecclesiastical authority, and over whom
the dogmatic methods of the Schoolmen had lost their power.[32]
Nevertheless Ficino, as yet, was probably more of an intellectual than of
a practical Christian, and Christianity was not likely to take hold of the
mind of Italy--of re-awakening Europe--through any merely philosophical
disquisitions. The lamp of Plato might throw light on Christianity, but it
would not light up Christian fire in other souls. For Christianity is a
thing of the heart, not only of the head. Soul is kindled only by soul,
says Carlyle; and to teach religion the one thing needful is to find a man
who _has_ religion.[33] Should such a man arise, a man himself on fire
with Christian love and zeal, his torch might light up other torches, and
the fire be spread from torch to torch. But, until such a man should
arise, the lamp of philosophy must burn alone in Florence. Men might come
from far and near to listen to Marsilio Ficino--to share the patronage of
Lorenzo de’ Medici, to study Plato and Plotinus,--to learn how to
harmonise Plato and Aristotle, to master the Greek language and
philosophies,--to drink in the spirit of reviving learning--but, of true
Christian _religion_, the lamp had not yet been lit at Florence, or if lit
it was under a bushel.
[Sidenote: Oxford students in Italy.]
Already Oxford students had been to Italy, and returned full of the new
learning. Grocyn, one of them, had for some time been publicly teaching
Greek at Oxford, not altogether to the satisfaction of the old divines,
for the Latin of the Vulgate was, in their eye, the orthodox language, and
Greek a Pagan and heretical tongue. Linacre, too, had been to Italy and
returned, after sharing with the children of Lorenzo de’ Medici the
tuition of Politian and Chalcondyles.[34]
These men had been to Italy and had returned, to all appearances, mere
humanists. Now five years later Colet had been to Italy and had returned,
_not_ a mere humanist, but an earnest Christian reformer, bent upon giving
lectures, not upon Plato or Plotinus, but upon St. Paul’s Epistles. What
had happened during these four years to account for the change?
III. COLET’S PREVIOUS HISTORY (1496).
[Sidenote: Colet’s return from Italy.]
John Colet was the eldest[35] son of Sir Henry Colet, a wealthy merchant,
who had been more than once Lord Mayor of London,[36] and was in favour at
the court of Henry VII. His father’s position held out to him the
prospect of a brilliant career. He had early been sent to Oxford, and
there, having passed through the regular course of study in all branches
of scholastic philosophy, he had taken his degree of Master of Arts.
[Sidenote: His studies at Oxford.]
On the return of Grocyn and Linacre from Italy full of the new learning,
Colet had apparently caught the contagion. For we are told he ‘eagerly
devoured Cicero, and carefully examined the works of Plato and
Plotinus.’[37]
When the time had come for him to choose a profession, instead of deciding
to follow up the chances of commercial life, or of royal favour, he had
resolved to take Orders.
[Sidenote: Sets out on his travels.]
The death of twenty-one[38] brothers and sisters, leaving him the sole
survivor of so large a family, may well have given a serious turn to his
thoughts. But inasmuch as family influence was ready to procure him
immediate preferment, the path he had chosen need not be construed into
one of great self-denial. It was not until long after he had been
presented to a living in Suffolk and a prebend in Yorkshire, that he left
Oxford, probably in or about 1494, for some years of foreign travel.[39]
The little information which remains to us of what Colet did on his
continental journey, is very soon told.
[Sidenote: Colet studies the Scriptures in Italy.]
He went first into France and then into Italy.[40] On his way there, or
on his return journey, he met with some German monks, of whose primitive
piety and purity he retained a vivid recollection.[41] In Italy he
ardently pursued his studies. But he no longer devoted himself to the
works of Plato and Plotinus. In Italy, the hotbed of the Neo-Platonists,
he ‘_gave himself up_’ (we are told) ‘_to the study of the Holy
Scriptures_,’ after having, however, first made himself acquainted with
the works of the Fathers, including amongst them the mystic writings then
attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite. He acquired a decided preference
for the works of Dionysius, Origen, Ambrose, Cyprian, and Jerome over
those of Augustine. Scotus, Aquinas, and other Schoolmen had each shared
his attention in due course. He is said also to have diligently studied
during this period Civil and Canon Law, and especially what Chronicles and
English classics he could lay his hands on; and his reason for doing so is
remarkable--that he might, by familiarity with them, polish his style, and
so prepare himself for the great work of preaching the Gospel in
England.[42]
What it was that had turned his thoughts in this direction no record
remains to tell. Yet the knowledge of what was passing in Italy, while
Colet was there, surely may give a clue, not likely to mislead, to the
explanation of what otherwise might remain wholly unexplained. To have
been in Italy when Grocyn and Linacre were in Italy--between the years
1485 and 1491--was, as we have said, to have drunk at the fountain-head of
reviving learning, and to have fallen under the fascinating influence of
Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Platonic Academy--an influence more likely to
foster the selfish coldness of a semi-pagan philosophy than to inspire
such feelings as those with which Colet seems to have returned from _his_
visit to Italy.[43]
But in the meantime Lorenzo had died, the tiara had changed hands, and
events were occurring during _Colet’s_ stay in Italy--probably in
1495--which may well have stirred in his breast the earnest resolution to
devote his life to the work of religious and political reform.
[Sidenote: Ecclesiastical scandals.]
For to have been in Italy while Colet was in Italy was to have come face
to face with Rome at the time when the scandals of Alexander VI. and Cæsar
Borgia were in everyone’s mouth; to have been brought into contact with
the very worst scandals which had ever blackened the ecclesiastical system
of Europe, at the very moment when they reached their culminating point.
On the other hand, to have been in Italy when Colet was in Italy was to
have come into contact with the first rising efforts at Reform.
[Sidenote: Savonarola.]
If Colet visited Florence as Grocyn and Linacre had done before him, he
must have come into direct contact with Savonarola while as yet his fire
was holy and his star had not entered the mists in which it set in later
years.
[Sidenote: Savonarola’s preaching.]
Recollecting what the great Prior of San Marco was--what his fiery and all
but prophetic preaching was--how day after day his burning words went
forth against the sins of high and low; against tyranny in Church or
State; against idolatry of philosophy and neglect of the Bible in the
pulpit; recollecting how they told their tale upon the conscience of
Lorenzo de’ Medici, and of his courtiers as well as upon the crowds of
Florence;--can the English student, it may well be asked, have passed
through all this uninfluenced? If he visited Florence at all he must have
heard the story of Savonarola’s interview with the dying Lorenzo; he must
have heard the common talk of the people, how Politian and Pico, bosom
friends of Lorenzo, had died with the request that they might be buried in
the habit of the order, and under the shadow of the convent of San
Marco;[44] above all, he must again and again have joined, one would
think, with the crowd daily pressing to hear the wonderful preacher.
Lorenzo de’ Medici had died before Colet set foot upon Italian soil:
probably also Pico and Politian.[45] And the death of these men had added
to the grandeur of Savonarola’s position. He was still preaching those
wonderful sermons, all of them in exposition of Scripture, to which
allusion has been made, and exerting that influence upon his hearers to
which so many great minds had yielded.
[Sidenote: Savonarola’s influence on Pico and Ficino.]
The man who _had_ religion--the one requisite for teaching it--had arisen.
And at the touch of his torch other hearts had caught fire. The influence
of Savonarola had made itself felt even within the circle of the Platonic
Academy. Pico had become a devoted student of the Scriptures and had died
an earnest Christian. Ficino himself, without ceasing to be a Neo-Platonic
philosopher, had also, it would seem, been profoundly influenced for a
time by the enthusiasm the great reformer.[46] And in the light of
Colet’s return to Oxford from Italy, a lover of Dionysius and to lecture
on St. Paul’s Epistles, it is curious to observe that, shortly before
Colet’s visit to Italy, Ficino himself had published translations of some
of the Dionysian writings,[47] and that apparently about the time of
Colet’s visit he was himself lecturing on St. Paul.[48]
[Sidenote: Their influence on Colet.]
If therefore Colet visited Florence, it may well be believed that he came
into direct contact with Savonarola and Ficino. Whilst even if he did not
visit Florence at all (and there appears to be no direct evidence that he
did),[49] there remains abundant evidence, which will turn up in future
chapters, that Colet had studied the writings of Pico,[50] of Ficino,[51]
and of the authors most often quoted in their pages. He thus at least came
directly under _Florentine_ influence, at a time when the fire of
religious zeal, kindled into a flame by the enthusiasm of the great
Florentine Reformer, and fed by the scandals of Rome, was scattering its
sparks abroad.
[Sidenote: Spirit in which Colet returned to Oxford.]
Be this as it may, whatever amount of obscurity may rest upon the history
of the mental struggles through which Colet had passed before that result
was attained, certain it is that he had returned to England with his mind
fully made up, and with a character already formed and bent in a direction
from which it never afterwards swerved. He had returned to England, not to
enjoy the pleasures of fashionable life in London, not to pursue the
chances of Court favour, not to follow his father’s mercantile calling,
not even to press on at once towards the completion of his clerical
course; but, unordained as he was, and without doctor’s degree, in all
simplicity to begin the work which had now become the settled purpose of
his life, by returning to Oxford and announcing this course of lectures on
St. Paul’s Epistles.
IV. THOMAS MORE, ANOTHER OXFORD STUDENT (1492-6).
When Colet, catching the spirit of the new learning from Grocyn and
Linacre, left Oxford for his visit to Paris and Italy, he left behind him
at the university a boy of fifteen, no less devoted than himself to the
study of the Greek language and philosophy.
This boy was _Thomas More_. He was the son of a successful lawyer, living
in Milk Street, Cheapside.
[Sidenote: His early history.]
[Sidenote: Cardinal Morton.]
[Sidenote: More’s genius.]
Brought up in the very centre of London life, he had early entered into
the spirit of the stirring times on which his young life was cast. He was
but five years old when in April 1483 the news of Edward IV.’s death was
told through London. But he was old enough to hear an eyewitness tell his
father, that ‘one Pottyer, dwelling in Redcross Street, without
Cripplegate,’ within half a mile of his father’s door, ‘on the very night
of King Edward’s death, had exclaimed, “By my troth, man, then will my
master the Duke of Glo’ster be king.”’[52] And followed as this was by
Richard’s murder of the young Princes, he never forgot the incident. After
some years’ study at St. Anthony’s School in Threadneedle Street, his
father placed him in domestic service (as was usual in those times) with
the Archbishop and Lord Chancellor Morton,[53] a man than whom no one knew
the world better or was of greater influence in public affairs--the
faithful friend of Edward IV., the feared but cautious enemy of Richard,
the man to whose wisdom Henry VII. in great measure owed his crown. Morton
was the Gamaliel at whose feet young More was brought up, drinking in his
wisdom, storing up in memory his rich historic knowledge, learning the
world’s ways and even something of the ways of kings, till a naturally
sharp wit became unnaturally sharpened, and Morton recognised in the youth
the promise of the future greatness of the man. He was but thirteen or
fourteen at most, yet he would ‘at Christmas time suddenly sometimes step
in among the players, making up an extempore part of his own;’ ... and the
Lord Chancellor ‘would often say unto the nobles that divers times dined
with him, “This child here waiting at table, whosoever shall live to see
it, will prove a marvellous man.”’[54] It was Morton who had sent him to
Oxford ‘for his better furtherance in learning.’[55]
Colet probably had known More from childhood. Their fathers were both too
much of public men to be unknown to each other, and though Colet was
twelve years older than young More when they most likely met at Oxford in
1492-3, their common studies under Grocyn and Linacre were likely to bring
them into contact.[56] More’s ready wit, added to great natural power and
versatility of mind, were such as to enable him to keep pace with others
much older than himself, and to devote himself with equal zeal to the new
learning.
[Sidenote: His fascinating character.]
Whether it was thus at Oxford that Colet had first formed his high opinion
of More’s character and powers, we know not, but certain it is that he was
long after wont to speak of him as the _one genius_ of whom England could
boast.[57] Moreover, along with great intellectual gifts was combined in
the young student a gentle and loving disposition, which threw itself into
the bosom of a friend with so guileless and pure an affection, that when
men came under the power of its unconscious enchantment they literally
_fell in love_ with More. If Colet’s friendship with More dated back to
this period, he must have found in his young acquaintance the germs of a
character somewhat akin to his own. Along with so much of life and
generous loveliness, there was a natural independence of mind which formed
convictions for itself, and a strength and promptness of will whereby
action was made as a matter of course to follow conviction. There was, in
truth, in More’s character a singular union of conservative and radical
tendencies of heart and thought.
But the intercourse between them at Oxford did not last long, for Colet,
as already said, went off on his travels, leaving More buried in his
Oxford studies under Linacre’s tuition.
[Sidenote: More already destined for the Bar.]
It was the father’s purpose that the son at Oxford should be preparing for
his future profession. Jealous lest the temptations of college life should
disqualify him for the severe discipline involved in those legal studies
to which it was to be the preparatory step, he kept him in leading-strings
as far as he possibly could, cutting down his pecuniary allowance to the
smallest amount which would enable him to pay his way, even compelling him
to refer to himself before purchasing the most necessary articles of
clothing as his old ones wore out. He judged that by these means he should
keep his son more closely to his books, and prevent his being allured from
the rigid course of study which in his utilitarian view was best adapted
to fit him for the bar.[58]
[Sidenote: More leaves Oxford.]
[Sidenote: More enters Lincoln’s Inn.]
So far as can be traced, this stern discipline did not fail of its
end;[59] he worked on at Oxford, without getting into mischief, and
certainly without neglecting his books. But there was another snare from
which parental anxiety was not able wholly to preserve him. Before he had
been two years at Oxford, the father found out that he had begun to show
symptoms of fondness for the study of the Greek language and
literature,[60] and might even be guilty of preferring the philosophy of
the Greeks to that of the Schoolmen. This was treading on dangerous
ground, and it seemed to the anxious parent high time that a stop should
be put to new-fangled and fascinating studies, the use of which to a
lawyer he could not discern. So, somewhat abruptly, he took young More
away from the University, and had him at once entered as a student at New
Inn.[61] After the usual course of legal studies at New Inn, he was
admitted in February 1496,[62] just as Colet was returning from Italy, as
a student of Lincoln’s Inn, for a few more years of hard legal study,
preparatory to his call to the Bar.
V. COLET FIRST HEARS OF ERASMUS (1496).
One other circumstance must be mentioned in this chapter.
Whilst Colet was passing through Paris, on his return journey from Italy,
he became acquainted with the French historian Gaguinus, whose work ‘_De
Origine et Gestis Francorum_,’ had been published shortly before.[63]
Colet was in the habit of reading every book of history which came in his
way,[64] and no doubt this history of Gaguinus was no exception to the
rule. Whilst he was at Paris, a letter was shown to him which the
historian had received from a scholar and acquaintance of rising celebrity
in Paris, in which the new history was reviewed and praised.[65] From the
perusal of this letter, Colet formed a high estimate of the learning and
wide range of knowledge of its accomplished writer.[66] But scholars were
plentiful in Paris, and he was not personally introduced to this one in
particular. He was not then, like Gaguinus, one of the lions of Paris,
though he was destined to become one of the lions of History. Colet after
reading his letter did not forget his name. Nor was it a name likely to be
soon forgotten by posterity.
It was, ‘_Erasmus_.’
CHAPTER II.
I. COLET’S LECTURES ON ST. PAUL’S EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS (1496-7?).
[Sidenote: The state of Scripture study at Oxford.]
To appreciate the full significance of Colet’s lectures, it is needful to
bear in mind what was the current opinion of the scholastic divines of the
period concerning the Scriptures, and what the practical mode of
exposition pursued by them at the Universities.
The scholastic divines, holding to a traditional belief in the _plenary_
and _verbal_ inspiration of the whole Bible, and remorselessly pursuing
this belief to its logical results, had fallen into a method of exposition
almost exclusively _textarian_. The Bible, both in theory and in practice,
had almost ceased to be a record of real events, and the lives and
teaching of living men. It had become an arsenal of texts; and these texts
were regarded as detached invincible weapons to be legitimately seized and
wielded in theological warfare, for any purpose to which their words might
be made to apply, without reference to their original meaning or context.
[Sidenote: The Bible regarded as verbally inspired. Method of exposition
_textarian_.]
Thus, to take a practical example, when St. Jerome’s opinion was quoted
incidentally that possibly St. Mark, in the second chapter of his Gospel,
might by a slip of memory have written ‘Abiathar’ in mistake for
‘Abimelech,’ a learned divine, a contemporary of Colet’s at Oxford,
nettled by the very supposition, declared positively that ‘that could not
be, unless the Holy Spirit himself could be mistaken;’ and the only
authority he thought it needful to cite in proof of the statement was a
text in Ezekiel: ‘Whithersoever the Spirit went, thither likewise the
wheels were lifted up to follow Him.’[67] It was in vain that the reply
was suggested that ‘it is not for us to define in what manner the Spirit
might use His instrument.’ The divine triumphantly replied, ‘The Spirit
himself in Ezekiel _has_ defined it. The wheels were not lifted up, except
to follow the Spirit.’[68]
[Sidenote: Theory of manifold senses.]
[Sidenote: Literal sense neglected.]
[Sidenote: The Bible a dead book.]
This Oxford divine did not display any peculiar bigotry or blindness. He
did but follow in the well-worn ruts of his scholastic predecessors. It
had been solemnly laid down by Aquinas in the ‘Summa,’ that ‘inasmuch as
God was the author of the Holy Scriptures, and all things are at one time
present to His mind, therefore, under their single text, they express
several meanings.’ ‘Their literal sense,’ he continues, ‘is manifold;
their spiritual sense threefold--viz. allegorical, moral, anagogical.’[69]
And we have the evidence of another well-known Oxford student, also a
contemporary with Colet at the University, that this was then the
prevalent view. Speaking of the dominant school of divines, he remarks:
‘They divide the Scripture into four senses, the literal, tropological,
allegorical, and analogical--the literal sense has become nothing at
all.... Twenty doctors expound one text twenty ways, and with an antitheme
of half an inch some of them draw a thread of nine days long.... They not
only say that the literal sense profiteth nothing, but also that it is
hurtful and noisesome and killeth the soul. And this they prove by a text
of Paul, 2 Cor. iii., “The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.”
Lo! say they, the literal sense killeth, the spiritual sense giveth
life.’[70] And the same student, in recollection of his intercourse at the
Universities with divines of the traditional school in these early days,
bears witness that ‘they were wont to look on no more Scripture than they
found in their Duns;’[71] while at another time he complains ‘that some of
them will prove a point of the Faith as well out of a fable of Ovid or any
other poet, as out of St. John’s Gospel or Paul’s Epistles.’[72] Thus had
the scholastic belief in the verbal inspiration of the sacred text led men
blindfold into a condition of mind in which they practically ignored the
Scriptures altogether.[73]
[Sidenote: Colet’s lectures.]
Such was the state of things at Oxford when Colet commenced his lectures.
The very boldness of the lecturer and the novelty of the subject were
enough to draw an audience at once. Doctors and abbots, men of all ranks
and titles, flocked with the students into the lecture hall, led by
curiosity doubtless at first, or it may be, like the Pharisees of old,
bent upon finding somewhat whereof they might accuse the man whom they
wished to silence. But since they came again and again, as the term went
by, _bringing their note-books with them_, it soon became clear that they
continued to come with some better purpose.[74]
[Sidenote: Colet’s style of speaking.]
Colet already, at thirty, possessed the rare gift of saying what he had to
say in a few telling words, throwing into them an earnestness which made
every one feel that they came from his heart. ‘You say what you mean, and
mean what you say. Your words have birth in your heart, not on your lips.
They follow your thoughts, instead of your thoughts being shaped by them.
You have the happy art of expressing with ease what others can hardly
express with the greatest labour.’[75] Such was the first impression made
by Colet’s eloquence upon one of the greatest scholars of the day, who
heard him deliver some of these lectures during another term.
[Sidenote: Colet’s method of exposition.]
From the fragments which remain of what seem to be manuscript notes of
these lectures, written by Colet himself at the ‘urgent and repeated
request,’ as he expressed it, ‘of his faithful auditors,’[76] and now
preserved in the Cambridge Libraries,[77] something more than a
superficial notion may be gained of what these lectures were.
[Sidenote: Not _textarian_.]
They were in almost every particular in direct contrast with those of the
dominant school. They were not _textarian_. They did not consist of a
series of wiredrawn dissertations upon isolated texts. They were no
‘thread of nine days long drawn from an antitheme of half an inch.’ Colet
began at the beginning of the Epistle to the Romans, and went through with
it to the end, in a course of lectures, treating it as a whole, and not as
an armoury of detached texts.[78] Nor were they on the model of the
_Catena aurea_, formed by linking together the recorded comments of the
great Church authorities. There is hardly a quotation from the Fathers or
Schoolmen throughout the exposition of the Epistle to the Romans.[79]
[Sidenote: Colet points out the marks of St. Paul’s own character.]
[Sidenote: Colet’s personal interest in St. Paul.]
Instead of following the current fashion of the day, and displaying
analytical skill in dividing the many senses of the sacred text, Colet, it
is clear, had but one object in view, and that object was to bring out the
direct practical meaning which the apostle meant to convey to those to
whom his epistles were addressed. To him they were the earnest words of a
living man addressed to living men, and suited to their actual needs. He
loved those words because he had learned to love the apostle--the
_man_--who had written them, and had caught somewhat of his spirit. He
loved to trace in the epistles the marks of St. Paul’s own character. He
would at one time point out, in his abruptly suspended words, that
‘_vehemence of speaking_’ which did not give him time to perfect his
sentences.[80] At another time he would stop to admire the rare prudence
and tact with which he would temper his speech and balance his words to
meet the needs of the different classes by whom his epistle would be
read.[81] And again he would compare the eager expectations expressed in
the Epistle to the Romans of so soon visiting Rome and Spain, with the far
different realities of the apostle’s after life; recalling to mind the
circumstances of his long imprisonment at Cæsarea, and his arrival at last
in Rome, _four years_ after writing his epistle, to remain a prisoner two
years longer in the Imperial city before he could carry out his intention
of visiting Spain.[82] He loved to tell how, notwithstanding these
cherished plans for the future, the apostle, being a man of great courage,
was prepared, ‘by his faith, and love of Christ,’[83] to bear his
disappointment, and to reply to the prophecy of Agabus, that he was ready,
not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of his
Master, if need be, instead of fulfilling the plans he had laid out for
himself.
[Sidenote: Circumstances of the Roman Christians.]
And whilst investing the epistles with so _personal_ an interest, by thus
bringing out their connection with St. Paul’s character and history, Colet
sought also to throw a sense of reality and life into their teaching, by
showing how specially adapted they were to the circumstances of those to
whom they were addressed. When, for instance, he was expounding the
thirteenth chapter of the Epistle, he would take down his _Suetonius_ in
order to ascertain the state of society at Rome and the special
circumstances which made it needful for St. Paul so strongly to urge Roman
Christians ‘to be obedient to the higher powers, and to pay tribute
also.’[84]
[Sidenote: Colet tries to look at all sides of a doctrine.]
[Sidenote: Question of free will.]
It is very evident, too, how careful he was not to give a one-sided view
of the apostle’s doctrine--what pains he took to realise his actual
meaning, not merely in one text and another, but in the drift of the whole
epistle; now ascertaining the meaning of a passage by its place in the
apostle’s argument;[85] now comparing the expressions used by St. Paul
with those used by St. John, in order to trace the practical harmony
between the Johannine and Pauline view of a truth, which, if regarded on
one side only, might be easily distorted and misunderstood. In expounding
the Epistle to the Romans it was impossible to avoid allusion to the great
question afterwards forced into so unhappy a prominence by the Wittemberg
and Geneva Reformers, as it had already been by Wiclif and Huss--the
question of the freedom of the Will. Upon this question Colet showed an
evident anxiety not to fall into one extreme whilst avoiding the other.
His view seems to have been that the soul which is melted and won over to
God by the power of _love_ is won over _willingly_, and yet through no
merit of its own. Probably his views upon this point would be described as
‘mystic.’ Certainly they were not Augustinian.[86] In concluding a long
digression upon this endless and perplexing question, Colet apologises
for the length to which he had wandered from St. Paul, and excuses
himself on the ground that ‘his zeal and affection towards men’--his
desire ‘to confirm the weak and wavering’--had got the better of his ‘fear
of wearying the reader.’[87]
Connected with this habit of trying to look at all sides of a doctrine,
there is, I think, visible throughout, an earnest attempt to regard it in
its practical connection with human life and conduct rather than to rest
in its logical completeness.
[Sidenote: Colet dwells on the practical aspects of St. Paul’s doctrines.]
[Sidenote: Quotes Marsilio Ficino,]
If he quotes from the Neo-Platonic philosophers of Florence (and almost
the only quotation of any length contained in this manuscript is from the
_Theologia Platonica_ of Marsilio Ficino[88]), it is, not to follow them
into the mazes of Neo-Platonic speculation, but to enforce the practical
point, that whilst, here upon earth, the _knowledge_ of God is impossible
to man, the _love_ of God is not so; and that by how much it is worse to
_hate_ God than to be ignorant of Him, by so much is it better to _love_
Him than to _know_ Him.
[Sidenote: and Aristeas.]
And never does he speak more warmly and earnestly than when after having
urged with St. Paul, that ‘rites and ceremonies neither purify the spirit
nor justify the man,’[89] and having quoted from _Aristeas_ to show how,
on Jewish feast days, seventy priests were occupied in slaying and
sacrificing thousands of cattle, deluging the temple with blood, thinking
it well pleasing to God, he points out how St. Paul covertly condemned
these outward sacrifices, as Isaiah had done before him, by insisting upon
that _living sacrifice of men’s hearts and lives_ which they were meant to
typify.[90] He urges with St. Paul that God is pleased with _living_
sacrifices and not dead ones, and does not ask for sacrifices in cattle,
but in _men_. His will is that their beastly appetites should be slain and
consumed by the fire of God’s Spirit[91] ...; that men should be converted
from a proud trust in themselves to an humble faith in God, and from
self-love to the love of God. To bring this about, Colet thought was ‘the
chief cause, yes the sole cause,’ of the coming of the Son of God upon
earth in the flesh.[92]
[Sidenote: Colet points out the need of ecclesiastical reform.]
Nor was he afraid to apply these practical lessons to the circumstances of
his own times. Thus, in speaking of the collections made by St. Paul in
relief of the sufferers from the famine in Judea (the same he thought as
that predicted by Agabus), he pointed out how much better such voluntary
collections were than ‘money extorted by bitter exactions under the name
of tithes and oblations.’[93] And, referring to the advice to Timothy, ‘to
avoid avarice and to follow after justice, piety, faith, charity,
patience, and mercy,’ he at once added that ‘_priests of our time_’ might
well be admonished ‘to set such an example as this _amongst their own
parishioners_,’ referring to the example of St. Paul, who chose to ‘get
his living by labouring with his hands at the trade of tentmaking, so as
to avoid even suspicion of avarice or scandal to the Gospel.’[94]
One other striking characteristic of this exposition must be
mentioned--the unaffected modesty which breathes through it, which, whilst
not quoting authority, does not claim to be an authority itself, which
does not profess to have attained full knowledge, but preserves throughout
the childlike spirit of enquiry.[95]
* * * * *
On the whole, the spirit of Colet’s lectures was in keeping with his
previous history.
[Sidenote: Colet quotes the Neo-Platonist.]
The passage already mentioned as quoted from Ficino, the facts that, in a
marginal note on the manuscript, added apparently in Colet’s handwriting,
there is also a quotation from Pico,[96] and that the names of
Plotinus,[97] and ‘Joannes Carmelitanus,’[98] are cited in the course of
the exposition--all this is evidence of the influence upon Colet’s mind of
the writings of the philosophers of Florence, confirming the inference
already drawn from the circumstances of his visit to Italy. But in its
_comparative_ freedom from references to authorities of _any_ kind, except
the New Testament, Colet’s exposition differs as much from the writings of
Ficino and Pico as from those of the Scholastic Divines.
[Sidenote: Marks of his love for Dionysius.]
In many peculiar phrases and modes of thought, evident traces also occur
of that love for the Dionysian writings which Colet is said to have
contracted in Italy, and which he shared with the modern Neo-Platonic
school.
[Sidenote: Origen and Jerome.]
In the free critical method of interpretation and thorough acknowledgment
of the human element in Scripture, as well as in the Anti-Augustinian
views already alluded to, there is evidence equally abundant in
confirmation of the statement, that he had acquired when abroad a decided
preference for Origen and Jerome over Augustine.
[Sidenote: His independent search for truth.]
Lastly in his freedom from the prevailing vice of the patristic
interpreters--their love of allegorising Scripture--and in his fearless
application of the critical methods of the New learning to the Scriptures
themselves, in order to draw out their literal sense, there is striking
confirmation of the further statement that, whilst in Italy, he had
‘devoted himself wholly’[99] to their study. Colet’s object obviously had
been to study St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans for _himself_, and his
whole exposition confirms the truth of his own declaration in its last
sentence, that ‘he had tried to the best of his power, with the aid of
Divine grace, to bring out St. Paul’s true meaning.’ ‘Whether indeed’ (he
adds modestly) ‘I have done this I hardly can tell, but the greatest
_desire_ to do so I _have_ had.’[100]
II. VISIT FROM A PRIEST DURING THE WINTER VACATION (1496-7?).
[Sidenote: Conversation on the richness of St. Paul’s writings.]
Colet, one night during the winter vacation, was alone in his chambers. A
priest knocked at the door. He was soon recognised by Colet as a diligent
attender of his lectures. They drew their chairs to the hearth, and talked
about this thing and that over the winter fire, in the way men do when
they have something to say, and yet have not courage to come at once to
the point. At length the priest pulled from his bosom a little book.
Colet, amused at the manner of his guest, smilingly quoted the words,
‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’ The priest
explained that the little book contained the Epistles of St. Paul,
carefully transcribed by his own hand. It was indeed a treasure, for of
all the writings that had ever been written, he most loved and admired
those of St. Paul; and he added, in a politely flattering tone, that it
was Colet’s lectures during the recent term, which had chiefly excited in
him this affection for the apostle. Colet turned a searching eye upon his
guest, and finding that he was truly in earnest, replied with warmth,
‘Then, brother, I love you for loving St. Paul, for I, too, dearly love
and admire him.’ In the course of conversation, which now turned upon the
object which the priest had at heart, Colet happened to remark how
pregnant with both matter and thought were the Epistles of St. Paul, so
that almost every word might be made the subject of a discourse. This was
just what Colet’s guest wanted. Comparing Colet’s lectures with those of
the scholastic divines, who, as we have heard, were accustomed ‘out of an
antitheme of half an inch to draw a thread of nine days long’ upon some
useless topic, he may well have been struck with the richness of the vein
of ore which Colet had been working, and he had come that he might gather
some hints as to his method of study. ‘Then,’ said he, stirred up by this
remark of Colet’s, ‘I ask you now, as we sit here at our ease, to extract
and bring to light from this hidden treasure, which you say is so rich,
some of these truths, so that I may gain from this our talk whilst sitting
together something to store up in the memory, and at the same time catch
some hints as to how, following your example, I may seize hold of the main
points in the epistles when I read St. Paul by myself.’
[Sidenote: Romans i. taken as an example.]
‘My good friend,’ replied Colet, ‘I will do as you wish. Open your book,
and we will see how many and what golden truths we can gather from the
first chapter only of the Epistle to the Romans.’
‘But,’ added the priest, ‘lest my memory should fail me, I should like to
write them down as you say them.’ Colet assented, and thereupon dictated
to his guest a string of the most important points which struck him as he
read through the chapter. They were, as Colet said, only like detached
rings, carelessly cut from the golden ore of St. Paul, as they sat over
the winter fire, but they would serve as examples of what might be
gathered from a single chapter of the apostle’s writings.
The priest departed, fully satisfied with the result of his visit; and
from the evident pleasure with which Colet told this story in a letter to
Kidderminster, Abbot of Winchcombe,[101] we may learn how his own spirits
were cheered by the proof it gave, that he had not laboured altogether in
vain.
[Sidenote: Letter to an Abbot.]
The letter itself, too, apart from the story which it tells, may give some
insight into his feelings during these months of solitary labour. It
reads, I think, like the letter of a man deeply in earnest, engaged in
what he feels to be a great work; whose sense of the greatness of the work
suggests a natural and noble anxiety, that though he himself should not
live to finish it, it may yet be carried forward by others; whose ambition
it is to die working at his post, leaving behind him, at least, the first
stones laid of a building which others greater than he may carry on to
completion.
After telling the story of the priest’s visit, Colet writes thus:--
_Colet to the Abbot of Winchcombe._
* * * * *
‘Thus, Reverend Father, what he [the priest] wrote down at my
dictation I have wished to detail to you, so that you too, so ardent
in your love of all sacred wisdom, may see what we, sitting over the
winter fire, noted offhand in our St. Paul.
[Sidenote: Colet wants his friend to see why he admires St. Paul’s
writings.]
‘In the first chapter only of the Epistle to the Romans, we found all
the following truths. [Here follows a long list.]... These we
extracted, and noted, venerable father, as I said, offhand, in this
one chapter only. Nor are these all we might have noted. For even in
the very address one might discover that Christ was promised by the
prophets, that Christ is both God and man, that Christ sanctifies men,
that through Christ there is a resurrection, both of the soul and of
the body. And besides these there are numberless others contained in
this chapter, which anyone with lynx eyes could easily find and dig
out, if he wished, for himself. _Paul_, of all others, seems to me to
be a fathomless _ocean_ of wisdom and piety. But these few, thus
hastily picked out, were enough for our good priest, who wanted some
thoughts struck off roundly, and fashioned like rings, from the gold
of St. Paul. These, as you see, I have written out for you with my own
hand, most worthy father, that your mind, in its golden goodness,
might recognise, as from a specimen, how much gold lies treasured up
in St. Paul.
‘I want the Warden also to read this over with you, for his cultivated
taste and love of everything good is such that I think he will be
very much pleased with whatever of good it may contain.
‘Farewell, most excellent and beloved father.
‘Yours, JOHN COLET.’
‘When you have read what is contained on this sheet of paper, let me
have it again, for I have no copy of it; and, although I am not in the
habit of keeping my letters, and cannot do so, as I send them off just
as I write them, without keeping a copy; yet if any of them contain
anything instructive (_aliquid doctrinæ_), I do not like to lose them
entirely. Not that they are in themselves worth preserving, but that,
left behind me, they may serve as little memorials of me. And if there
be any other reason why I should wish to preserve my letters to you,
this is one, and a chief one--that I should be glad for them to remain
as permanent witnesses of my regard for you.
‘Again, farewell!’
The sole survivor of a family of twenty-two, though himself but thirty,
Colet might well keep always in view the possibility of an early death.
III. COLET ON THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF THE CREATION (1497?).
It would seem that one of Colet’s friends, named _Radulphus_, had been
attempting to expound ‘_the dark places of Scripture_,’ and that in doing
so he had commenced with the words of Lamech in the fourth chapter of
Genesis, as though this were the first ‘dark place’ to be found in the
Bible!
[Sidenote: Letters of Colet on the Mosaic account of creation.]
Out of this circumstance arose a correspondence on the meaning of the
first chapter of Genesis, which Colet thought required explanation as much
as any other portion of Scripture. Four of Colet’s letters to Radulphus,
containing his views on the Mosaic account of the creation, have
fortunately been preserved, bound up with a copy of his manuscript
exposition on the Epistle to the Romans, in the Library of Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge.[102] Colet seems to have thought them worth
preserving, as he did the letter to the Abbot of Winchcombe; and as any
attempt to realise the position and feelings of Colet, when commencing his
lectures at Oxford on St. Paul’s epistles, would have been very imperfect
without the story of the priest’s visit, so these letters to Radulphus,
apart from their intrinsic interest, are especially valuable as giving
another practical illustration of the position which Colet had assumed
upon the question of the inspiration and interpretation of the Scriptures;
as showing, perhaps, more clearly than anything else could have done, that
the principles and method which he had applied to St. Paul’s writings,
were not hastily adopted, but the result of mature conviction,--that Colet
was ready to apply them consistently to the Old Testament as well as to
the New, to the first chapter of Genesis as well as to the Epistle to the
Romans.
[Sidenote: First letter to Radulphus.]
Colet begins his first letter by telling Radulphus how surprised he was
that, whilst professing to expound the ‘dark places of Scripture,’ he
should, as already mentioned, have commenced with the words of Lamech,
leaving the first three chapters of Genesis untouched; for these very
chapters, so lightly passed over by Radulphus, seemed to him, he said, ‘so
obscure that they might almost in themselves be that “_abyss_” to which
Moses alluded when he wrote that “darkness covered the face of the
deep.”’[103]
[Sidenote: Use of a knowledge of Hebrew.]
After admitting the impossibility of coming to an accurate understanding
of the meaning of what Moses wrote without a knowledge of Hebrew and
access to Hebrew commentaries, ‘which Origen, Jerome, and all really
diligent searchers of the Scriptures have appreciated,’ he goes on to say
that, notwithstanding their extreme obscurity, and the possibility that
Radulphus might be able to throw more light upon them than he himself
could, he would nevertheless give him some of his notions on the meaning
of the verses from ‘In the beginning,’ &c. to the end of the ‘first day.’
He then began his explanation by saying that, though not unmindful of the
manifold senses of Scripture, he should confine himself to rapidly
following _one_;[104] and this seems to be the only allusion in these
letters to the prevalent theory of the ‘manifold senses.’ Taken in
connection with the full expression of his views upon the subject on a
future occasion, the words here made use of probably must be construed
rather as showing that he did not wish at that moment to enter into the
question with Radulphus, than as intended to give any indication of what
his views were upon it.
[Sidenote: All things created at once in eternity.]
Then he proceeds to state his conviction that the first few verses of
Genesis contain a sort of summary of the whole work of creation. ‘First
of all, I conceive,’ Colet wrote, ‘that in this passage the creation of
the universe has been delivered to us in brief (_summatim_), and that God
created all things _at once_ in his eternity[105]--in that eternity which
transcends all time, and yet is less extended than a point of time, which
has no division of time, and is before all time.’
The world consists primarily of _matter_ and _form_, and the object of
Moses was, Colet thought, to show that both matter and form were created
_at once_ (_simul_). And therefore Moses began with saying, ‘In the
beginning (i.e. in eternity) God created heaven (i.e. form) and the earth’
(i.e. matter).[106] Matter was never without form, but that he might point
out the order of things, Moses added, that ‘the earth (matter) was empty
and void[107] (i.e. without solid and substantial being), and darkness
covered the face of the deep’ (i.e. the matter was in darkness, and
without life and being).[108] Then the text proceeds, ‘The Spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters.’ ‘See how beautifully’ (wrote Colet),
‘he proceeds in order, showing at one view the creation and union of form
with matter,[109] using the word “water” to express the unstable and fluid
condition of matter.’ Then follow the words, ‘Let there be light’ (i.e.
according to Colet, things assumed form and definition[110]).
Having thus explained the opening verses of Genesis as a statement in
brief--_a summary_--of the whole work of creation, Colet concluded this
first letter by saying, ‘What follows in Moses is a repetition and further
expansion of what he has said above--a distinguishing in _particular_ of
what before was comprehended in the _general_. If you think otherwise,
pray let me have your views. Farewell.’[111]
[Sidenote: Second letter.]
[Sidenote: Colet takes into account the rude multitude for whom Moses
wrote.]
[Sidenote: And that his object was to give them a moral lesson, not a
scientific one.]
Radulphus having, apparently in reply to this letter, requested Colet to
proceed to explain the _other_ days, Colet, in the _second_ letter, takes
up the subject where he left it in the first. Having spoken of form and
matter, Moses proceeds, he says, in proper order, and treats of things in
particular, ‘placing before the eye the arrangement of the world; which he
does in this way, in my opinion’ (wrote Colet), ‘that he may seem to have
regard to the understanding of the vulgar and rude multitude whom he
taught.’[112] Thus, as when trying to understand the Epistle to the
Romans, Colet took down his ‘Suetonius,’ and studied the circumstances of
the Roman Christians to whom the epistle was written, so, in trying to
understand the book of Genesis, Colet seems to have regarded it as written
expressly for the benefit of the children of Israel, and to have called to
mind how rude and uncivilised a multitude Moses had to teach; and he seems
to have come to the conclusion that the object of Moses was not to give to
the learned of future generations a scientific statement of the manner
and order of the creation of the universe, but to teach a _moral_ lesson
to the people whom he was leading out of the bondage and idolatry of
Egypt. And thus, in Colet’s view, Moses, ‘setting aside matters purely
Divine and out of the range of the common apprehension, proceeds to
instruct the unlearned people, by touching rapidly and lightly on the
order of those things with which their eyes were very palpably conversant,
that he might teach them what men are, and for what purpose they were
born, in order that he might be able with less difficulty to lead them on
afterwards to a more civilised life and to the worship of God--_which was
his main object in writing_.[113] And that this was so is made obvious by
the fact, that even amongst things cognisable to the senses, Moses passed
over such as are less palpable, as _air_ and _fire_, fearing to speak of
anything but what can easily be seen, as land, sea, plants, beasts, men;
singling out from amongst stars, the sun and moon, and of fishes, “great
whales.” Thus Moses arranges his details in such a way as to give the
people a clearer notion, and he does this _after the manner of a popular
poet_, in order that he may the more adapt himself to the spirit of simple
rusticity, picturing a succession of things, works, and times, of such a
kind as there certainly could not be in the work of _so great a
Workman_.’[114]
[Sidenote: Moses accommodated himself to the rude minds of the people.]
This recognition by Colet of _accommodation_, on the part of Moses, to the
limited understanding of the rude people whom he taught, occurs over and
over again in these letters; _so_ often, indeed, that in one letter he
apologises to Radulphus for the repetition, being aware, as he says, that
_he_ is not addressing a ‘muddle-headed Hebrew’ (lutulentum Hebræum), but
a most refined philosopher! Thus he explains the difficulty of the
creation of the firmament on the second day by saying, ‘This was made
before, but that simple and uncivilised multitude had to be taught in a
homely and palpable way.’[115]
[Sidenote: Third letter.]
In the third letter Colet proceeds to speak of the third day--the
separation of the waters from the dry land, and the creation of plants and
herbs. Here again everything is explained on the principle of
accommodation. ‘Since the untutored multitude, looking round them, saw
nothing but the sky above, and land and water here below, and then the
things which spring from land and water, and live in them, so Moses suits
his order to their powers of observation.’
[Sidenote: Colet believes in a sort of development of things.]
The firmament or sky was spoken of in the second day; now, therefore, on
the third day, Moses mentions land and water, and the things which spring
from them. Plants and herbs are thus spoken of almost as though they were
a part of land and water; and here Colet gives Radulphus what he speaks of
as a notion of his own, hard, perhaps, for his friend to receive, but
nevertheless his own conviction, that, [instead of each element being
separately created, as it were, out of nothing] ‘fire springs from ether,
air from fire, water from air, and from water, lastly, earth.’ And Moses
probably in speaking of the creation of plants &c. on the third day,
before he came to other things, intended thereby to show, Colet thought,
that the earth is spontaneously productive of plants. He also thought that
Moses mentioned the creation of plants before the heavenly bodies, in
order to show that the germinating principle is in the earth itself, and
not, according to the vulgar idea, in the sun and stars.
[Sidenote: Moses divided the creation into six days, after the manner of a
poet, by a useful and most wise poetic figment.]
At the end of the third letter, Colet naturally stumbles on the difficulty
of explaining how, if all things were created _at once_ ‘in the
beginning,’ before all time, Moses could say at the end of each stage of
his description of the creation, ‘and the evening and the morning were the
first, second, third, &c. _day_:’ and, after fairly losing himself in an
attempt to solve this difficulty, he ends by urging Radulphus to leave
these obscure points, which are practically beyond our range, and to bear
in mind throughout what he had before spoken of, viz. that whilst Moses
wished to speak in a manner not unworthy of God, he wished, at the same
time, in matters within the knowledge of the common people, to satisfy the
common people, and to keep to the order of things; above all things, to
lead the people on to the religion and worship of the one God.[116] ‘The
chief things known to the common people were sky, land and water, stars,
fishes, beasts, and so he deals with them. He arranged them in six days;
_partly_ because the things which readily occur to men’s minds are six in
number:[117]--(1) What is above the sky, (2) sky itself, (3) land,
surrounded by water, and productive of plants, (4) sun and moon in the
sky, (5) fish in the water, (6) beasts inhabiting earth and air, and
_man_, the inhabitant of the whole universe;--and _partly_ and _chiefly_,
that he might lead the people on to the imitation of God, whom, _after the
manner of a poet_, he had pictured as working for six days and resting the
seventh, so that they also should devote every seventh day to rest and to
the contemplation of God and to worship.’[118] ‘For, beyond all doubt,’
Colet proceeds to say, ‘Moses never would have put forward a number of
days for any other purpose than that, by this most useful and most wise
poetic figment, the people might be provoked to imitation by an example
set before them, and so ending their daily labours on the sixth day, spend
the seventh in the highest contemplation of God.’[119] Colet ends his
third letter by saying, ‘Thus you have my notions upon the work of the
third day, but what to make of it I know not. It is enough, as I have
said, to have touched upon it lightly. Farewell.’
[Sidenote: Fourth letter.]
[Sidenote: Colet confesses his uncertainty.]
From the commencement of the fourth letter it would seem that Radulphus
had been from home four days, and Colet jokingly tells him that _he_ had
spent all those four days in getting through _one_ more of the Mosaic
days. ‘And indeed whilst you have been working in the day under the sun,
I, during this time, have been wandering about in the night and the
darkness; neither did I see which way to go, nor do I know at what point I
have arrived.’ And then he went on to tell Radulphus that, while in this
perplexity himself, he seemed to have caught Moses also in a great
mistake, for in concluding each day’s work with the words, ‘the evening
and the morning were the second day, the third day,’ and so on, he ought
not to have said _day_ but _night_. What intervenes between the evening
and the morning must of necessity be _night_! For a _day_ begins in the
morning and ends with the evening! And he went on jokingly to say that
there was a still more pressing reason why Moses, dividing his subjects
into days, might have rather called them _nights_; viz. that ‘they are so
overwhelmed with darkness that nothing could be more like _night_ than
these Mosaic _days_!’ Then looking back upon his attempts to explain their
obscurity, he was obliged to confess that ‘perhaps while he had been
trying to throw some light upon them, he might, after all, have increased
the darkness;’ and he entreated Radulphus ‘to pour into the darkness some
of his light, that he might be enabled thereby to see Colet, and Colet
together with him to see Moses.’[120]
[Sidenote: All things must have been created at once.]
[Sidenote: Accommodation on the part of God to man.]
[Sidenote: Moses uses a most honest and pious poetic figure.]
After this candid confession of uncertainty, Colet tried to explain the
work of the fourth day, and the words, ‘Let there be lights in the
firmament of heaven;’ but the only way he could do so was by resorting
again to the principle of accommodation, which he did in these words: ‘As
we have said, all these were created at once. For it is unworthy of God,
and unbecoming in us, to think of any one thing as created after any
other, as though He had been unable to create them all at once. Hence in
Ecclesiasticus, “He who dwells in eternity created all things _at once_.”
But Moses, _after the manner of a good and pious poet_,[121] as Origen
(against Celsus) calls him, was willing to invent some figure, not
altogether worthy of God, if only it might but be profitable and useful to
men; which race of men is so dear to God, that God himself emptied himself
of his glory, taking the form of a servant, that he might accommodate
himself to the poor heart of man.[122] So all things of God, when given to
man, must needs lose somewhat of their sublimity,[123] and be put in a
form more palpable and more within the grasp of man. Accordingly, the
high knowledge of Moses about God and Divine things and the creation of
the world, when it came to be submitted to the vulgar apprehension,
savoured altogether of the humble and the rustic, so that he had to speak,
not according to _his_ own power of comprehension, but according to the
comprehension of the multitude. Thus, accommodating himself to _their_
comprehension, Moses endeavoured, by this most honest and pious poetic
figure, at once to allure them and draw them on to the worship of
God.’[124]
Here the manuscript abruptly ends[125] in the middle of a reference to the
works of Macrobius, whose sanction Colet was apparently about to quote in
support of his attempt to explain the first chapter of Genesis by
reference to the principle of accommodation.[126]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Where Colet got these views.]
The question may be asked:--‘Whence came this doctrine of accommodation
which Colet here used so boldly?’ It was at least no birth of the
nineteenth century, nor of the fifteenth. It belonged to a period a
thousand years earlier, when men had (as in Colet’s days and in ours) to
reconcile reason and faith--to find a firm basis of _fact_ for
Christianity, instead of resting upon mere ecclesiastical authority.
It will have been noticed that the two authors cited by Colet in these
letters were Origen and Macrobius. Traces of Dionysian influence are also
apparent.[127]
It has already been pointed out, that when, after a thousand years’
interval of restless slumber, the spirit of free enquiry was reawakened by
the revival of learning in Italy, the works of the pre-scholastic fathers
and philosophers were studied afresh. The works of Origen, Macrobius, and,
more than all, of Dionysius, were constantly studied and quoted by such
men as Ficino and Pico. And thus it came to pass that the doctrine of
accommodation, with other apparently new-fangled but really _old_
doctrines, floated, as it were, in the air which Colet had recently been
breathing in Italy.
[Sidenote: The _Heptaplus_ of Pico.]
The immediate source of some of the views contained in the letters to
Radulphus was evidently Pico’s ‘Heptaplus’[128] on the six days’ creation;
a work published in beautiful type, shortly before Colet’s visit to Italy,
and dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici.[129] Comparing this treatise of
Pico’s with Colet’s letters, the small verbal coincidences are too
striking to leave any doubt of the connection.
Nor does this tracing of Colet’s thoughts to their source detract from his
originality so much as might at first sight appear.
Colet found many different germs of thought in Pico. Falling into
congenial soil, this one attained a vigorous growth in his mind, which it
never attained with Pico. Other germs which flourished under Pico took no
root with Colet. The result was, that the spirit of the letters to
Radulphus had little in common with that of the ‘Heptaplus.’ Colet showed
his originality and independence of thought by seizing one rational idea
contained in Pico’s treatise, and leaving the rest. He caught and
unravelled one thread of common sense which Pico had contrived to
interweave with a web of learned but not very wise speculation.
IV. COLET STUDIES AFRESH THE PSEUDO-DIONYSIAN WRITINGS (1497?).
The next glimpse of Colet and his labours at Oxford reveals him immersed
in the study of the Pseudo-Dionysian writings: writing from memory an
abstract of the ‘Celestial’ and ‘Ecclesiastical’ Hierarchies,[130] and
even composing short treatises of his own, based throughout upon Dionysian
speculations.[131]
[Sidenote: The Pseudo-Dionysian writings.]
During the most part of the middle ages the Pseudo-Dionysian writings were
accepted generally as the genuine productions of Dionysius the
Areopagite--i.e. of a disciple of St. Paul himself. It is not surprising,
therefore, that Colet, falling into this current view, should regard the
writings of the disciple with some degree of that interest and reverence
with which he regarded those of the master. For a time it is evident they
exercised a strong fascination on his mind.
It has already been mentioned, that the influence of the Dionysian
writings upon the Neo-Platonists of Florence was natural, seeing that they
were in fact the embodiment of the result of the effervescence produced by
the mixture of Neo-Platonic speculations with the Christianity of a
thousand years earlier.
But whilst it was their _Neo-Platonic_ element which attracted the
attention of Florentine philosophers, it was chiefly, as it seems to me,
their _Christian_ element which fascinated Colet.
[Sidenote: Their intrinsic power.]
Nor can we of the nineteenth century altogether afford to ignore these
writings as forgeries. There must have been in them enough of intrinsic
power, apart from their supposed authorship, to account for the enormous
influence exerted by them for centuries over the highest minds in the
church, in spite of the wildness of speculation in which they seemed to
revel; just as there was enough of intrinsic power in St. Augustine to
account for _his_ mighty influence, in spite of his narrow views upon some
points. It is quite possible that, as the very dogmatism of St. Augustine
may have increased his influence in a dogmatic age, so, inasmuch as the
dogmatic theology of the Schoolmen aimed at a pan-theological settlement
of every possible question, their very wildness of speculation may have
aided the influence of the Dionysian writings. This may partly account for
the remarkable extent to which the works of St. Augustine and Dionysius
furnished, as it were, the weft and woof out of which Aquinas wove his
scholastic web.[132] But nothing but some intrinsic power in these works
themselves, apart from their dogmatism and speculation, could account for
their double position as forming the basis, not only of the Scholastic
Theology itself, but also of so many reactions against the results of its
supremacy. These reactions were not always Augustinian. Some of them were
mystic, and the supposed Dionysius was, so to speak, the prophet of the
Mystics.
One main secret of the intrinsic power of the Dionysian writings,
especially to such men as Colet, lay, undoubtedly, in the severe rebuke
they gave to the ecclesiastical scandals of the times. The state of the
church under Alexander VI. was such that earnest men in Italy had
practically either ceased to believe in it, and in Christianity, as of
divine institution; or were seeking a solution of their difficulties
through those Neo-Platonic speculations, out of which these
Pseudo-Dionysian writings had themselves sprung.
[Sidenote: What the Dionysian writings were.]
Colet doubtless, when he came to Italy, had the same difficulties to
fight. Could this ecclesiastical system, so degraded, so vicious, so
hollow and pernicious, be of God? He could not, and probably there was not
anyone in Europe at that moment who could, from his standing-point, wholly
reject it, without rejecting Christianity along with it. The Dionysian
writings presented a way of escape from this terrible alternative. If they
were genuine (and Colet believed them to be so), then the hierarchical
system and its sacraments, however perverted, were yet of apostolic
origin. These writings apparently described, in the words of a disciple of
St. Paul, their apostolic institution and their original intention and
meaning. But the notion gathered by Colet from Dionysius of the apostolic
intention presented an ideal so utterly pure and holy, as compared with
the hollowness and wickedness of ecclesiastical practice, as he saw it in
Italy, that he must indeed have had a heart of stone had he not been moved
by it.
The following passage will show, in Colet’s own words, how, following the
lead of such men as Pico and Ficino (with whose writings, we have seen, he
was acquainted), he was led to regard the Jewish traditions of the Cabala
as genuine Mosaic traditions, committed to writing by Ezra; and, in like
manner, to accept the Pseudo-Dionysian traditions as genuine apostolic
traditions, committed to writing by a disciple of St. Paul; and, further,
it will place in a clear light the connection between his faith in
Dionysius, his grief over the scandals of the church, and his zeal for
reform.
[Sidenote: Colet sees the difference between the Dionysian and the
Papal rites.]
‘I know not by what rashness of bishops, in later ages, the ancient
custom fell into disuse--a custom which, owing to its apostolic
institution, had the highest authority.... And had not St. Dionysius
(who seems to me to be such in our church as was Ezra in the synagogue
of Moses, who willed that the mysteries of the old law should be
committed to writing, lest in the confusion of affairs and of men the
record of so much wisdom should perish)--had not Dionysius, I say, in
like manner, as though divining the future carelessness of mankind,
left written down by his productive pen what he retained in memory of
the institutions of the apostle in arranging and regulating the
church, we should have had no record of this ancient custom.... How it
befel, (Colet continued) without grievous guilt, that these became
afterwards wholly changed, I know not; since we must believe that it
was by the teaching of the Holy Spirit that they ordained all things
in the church. For the words of our Saviour in St. John are these:
“Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you
into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he
shall hear, that shall he speak; and he will show you things to come.”
It is because their most holy traditions have been superseded and
neglected, and men have fallen away from the Spirit of God to their
own inventions, that, beyond doubt, all things have been wretchedly
disturbed and confounded; and, as I said before, unless God shall
have mercy upon us, all things will ‘go to ruin.’[133]
[Sidenote: Purity of the Dionysian standard.]
The truth was that the Dionysian writings, though not of apostolic origin
as Colet supposed, presented, nevertheless, a picture of the
ecclesiastical usages of an age a thousand years earlier than Colet’s; and
putting the earlier and the later usages in contrast, it was impossible
for him not to perceive at once how much more pure and rational in its
spirit and tendencies was the ancient Dionysian system than the more
modern Papal one.
[Sidenote: The Dionysian sacerdotal and ritualistic system is radically
different from the Papal.]
Both were sacerdotal and ritualistic; but the sacerdotalism and ritualism
of Dionysius were radically opposed in spirit to those of the more modern
system. During the interval between the fifth and the fifteenth century,
sacerdotalism had had time to turn almost literally upside-down, and
ritualism with it. It was thus quite natural that Colet, in the light of
Dionysius, should find ‘all things wretchedly disturbed and confounded.’
[Sidenote: The object of religion not to propitiate the Deity, but to
change the heart of man.]
The Dionysian theory, however speculative and vicious as such, at least
according to Colet’s version of it, did not, like the modern theory, tend
towards that grossest heathen conception of religion, according to which
its main object is the propitiation of the Deity, rather than the changing
of the heart of man.
Its gospel was not that Christ offered his sacrifice to propitiate an
unreconciled God--to reconcile God to man. On the contrary, it told of a
God who is ‘beautiful and good,’[134] who had created all things because
He is good, because He is good recalling[135] all things to Himself, by
the sacrifice of Himself redeeming them, not from His own wrath, but from
the power of Evil.
[Sidenote: Cur Deus Homo?]
[Sidenote: Colet on the ‘marvellous victory’ of a ‘suffering Christ.’]
The following passage may be taken in illustration of this:--‘When,
directly after the creation, foolish human nature was allured by the
seductive enticements of the enemy, and fell away from God into a womanish
and dying condition, and was rolling headlong down with rapid course to
death itself, then at length, in His own time, our good, and tender, and
kind, and gentle, and merciful God, giving us all good things at once in
place of all that was bad, willed to take upon Him human nature, and to
enter into it, and rescue it from the power of the adversary, overthrowing
and destroying his empire. For, as St. Paul writes to the Hebrews,
“Forasmuch as the children”--or servants--“are partakers of flesh and
blood,” ... therefore also God himself “made himself of no reputation, and
took upon him the form of a servant,” and “himself likewise took part of
the same” flesh and blood--that is, human nature--“that through death he
might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and
deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to
bondage:” that he might destroy, I say, that enemy, not by force, but (as
Dionysius says) by judgment and righteousness; which he calls a hidden
thing and a _mystery_.[136] For it was a marvellous victory, that the
Devil, though victorious, in the very fact of his conquering, should be
conquered; and that Jesus should conquer in the very fact of his being
vanquished on the cross; so that in reality, in the victory on each side,
the matter was otherwise than it seemed. And thus when the adversary that
vanquished man was himself vanquished by God, man was restored, without
giving any just cause of complaint to the devil, to the liberty and light
of God. There was shown to him the path to heaven, trodden by the feet of
Christ, whose footsteps we must follow if we would arrive where he has
gone. A suffering Christ, I say (most marvellous!), and dying as though
vanquished, overcame.... By that death we have been rescued from the dead,
and are the servants of God.’[137]
[Sidenote: Object of Christ’s death.]
Quaint and curious as this view of the connection between the sacrifice of
Christ and the just conquest of the power of Evil may seem to modern ears,
it reflects faithfully the view most current amongst the early Greek
Fathers; and it has at least this merit, that it cannot be translated into
the language of the heathen doctrine of propitiation.
[Sidenote: Modern ‘priests’ act _on behalf of man_ before God.]
It followed that, as the Dionysian theory left no place for the notion
that the sacrifice of Christ was offered to reconcile God to man (seeing
that it upheld the doctrine that it was the sheep that had gone astray,
and rejected the doctrine that the Shepherd had ever deserted the sheep),
so it left no place for a sacerdotal order, according to the heathen
notion of a priesthood. Its priests were not priests according to the
modern definition. It did not--it could not--represent its priesthood as
appearing as heathen priests did (and as some modern priests seem to think
they do)[138] on _behalf of man_ before God, presenting men’s offerings to
him. If Christ’s office, according to Dionysius, were emphatically to
_plead with men_, to bring _them_ back, so the priest’s office was to act
in his stead in the same work.
[Sidenote: According to Dionysius and Colet, priests act on behalf of God
towards man.]
The following passage from Colet’s abstract presents these two dependent
facts in their proper connection:--‘Christ’s office on earth the bishops
[elsewhere he speaks of priests and bishops as identical] everywhere
discharge, and in Him act as He acted, and with like zeal strive for the
purification, illumination, and salvation of mankind by constant preaching
of the truth and diffusion of Gospel light, even as He strove. St. Paul
says, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing
their trespasses unto them, and hath committed unto us the word of
reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ.” Acting in
Christ’s stead, they fan the fire which Christ came to send upon the
earth.... (Luke xii. 49, 50.) He baptized, as John testifies, “with the
Holy Ghost and with fire.” For fire purifies, illumines, and perfects.
That fire of the Spirit does this in the souls of men. For the increasing
of this wholesome conflagration amid the forest of men, the bishops are
vicars and ministers of Jesus, and they seek the kindling of mankind in
God. Now this fire is, I doubt not, the holy love of God.[139]... And the
messenger of this goodness, compassion, love, and tenderness of God was
his lovely son Jesus Christ, who ... brought down love to men, that they
being born anew by love, might in turn love their heavenly Father along
with Him.’[140]
[Sidenote: Modern and Dionysian ritualism very different.]
The Dionysian theory of sacerdotalism being thus, in its spirit and
attitude, an exact inversion of the modern one, it might naturally be
expected that the Dionysian ritualism would, in like manner, involve an
inversion of modern ritualistic notions.
This was the case. Instead of idolizing the sacraments as of mystic power
and virtue in themselves, the Dionysian theory represented them as
divinely instituted ceremonies intended to draw mankind by types and
shadows upward to God.
[Sidenote: The Eucharist.]
[Sidenote: Baptism.]
[Sidenote: Sponsors.]
[Sidenote: Priests have no power of loosing and binding.]
It did not, like modern ritualism, tend towards the view that the
Eucharist is a _sacrifice_ in the heathen sense--a continued offering by a
human priesthood of the sacrifice of Christ.[141] On the contrary, it
represented this sacrament as commemorative of the death of Christ, and as
symbolic of the professed communion on the part of men with Christ, and
with one another.[142] It did not set forth the sacrament of baptism as
modern ritualists are so fond of doing, as effecting there and then the
regeneration of the person baptized. But it regarded baptism as a symbolic
_profession_ of change of heart--as the ceremony in which the believer
openly takes his soldier’s oath to Christ, and promises amended
life.[143] It did not represent the sponsors as promising or professing
_in the child’s stead_, that he is then and there regenerated, but
promising that they themselves will do all they can to bring him up as a
child of God.[144] It did not admit in any sacerdotal order, any power to
remit or retain sin, to bind or to loose. On the contrary, it regarded
the priests as God’s ministers, who ought to keep in communion with Him,
so that receiving intimation by the Spirit of what is already bound or
loosed in heaven, they may disclose it on earth.[145]
* * * * *
If any sacerdotal theory could be believable, it must be confessed, there
is an intrinsically rational and _Christian_ tone about the Dionysian
theory according to Colet’s rendering of it, strangely lacking in that of
modern sacerdotalists.
Forgetting for the moment the speculative adjuncts to the theory, the
professed knowledge of mysteries unknown, which Colet’s belief in
Dionysius obliged him to accept, but which did not add any force to the
theory itself, it will be seen at once how powerful a rebuke he must have
felt it to be to the ecclesiastical scandals of the closing years of the
fifteenth century. It assumed, as the essential attribute of any
sacerdotal order laying claim to apostolic institution, the attribute of a
really pure and personal holiness. No merely official sanctity imputed
outwardly to a consecrated order, by virtue of its outward consecration,
could possibly satisfy its requirements.[146] And in the same way the
sacraments were nothing apart from the personal spiritual realities which
they were meant to symbolize.
[Sidenote: Religion consists in _love_.]
Underneath, therefore, the wild excess of symbolism and speculation which
lay on the surface, and formed, as it were, the _froth_ of the Dionysian
theology, Colet seems to have found this basis of eternal truth, that
religion is a thing of the heart, not of creed nor of ceremonial
observances; that, in Colet’s own rendering of the Dionysian
theory:--‘Knowledge leads not to eternal life, but _love_. Whoso loveth
God is known of Him. Ignorant love has a thousand times more power than
cold wisdom.’[147]
Colet’s abstracts of the Dionysian treatises abound with passages
expressive of the purity and holiness of heart required of the Christian,
and of the necessity of his love not being merely of the contemplative
kind, but an active love working for Christ and his fellowmen. The
following extracts may be taken as illustrations of this.
[Sidenote: The purity of Christians.]
In concluding the chapter on the meaning of baptism Colet
exclaims:--‘Gracious God! here may one perceive how cleansed and how pure
he that professes Christ ought to be; how inwardly and thoroughly washed;
how white, how shining, how utterly without blemish or spot; in fine, how
perfected and filled, according to his measure, with Christ himself....
May Jesus Christ himself bring it to pass, that we who profess Christ may
both be, and set our affections on, and do all things that are worthy of
our profession.’[148]
[Sidenote: Self-sacrifice for others a blessed thing.]
Speaking of the anointing after baptism of the soldier of Christ, Colet
says:--‘You must strive that you may conquer; you must conquer that you
maybe crowned. Fight in Him who fights in you and prevails--even Jesus
Christ, who has declared war against death, and fights in all.... It is
the rule of combat that we should imitate our leader.... We have no
enemies except sin (which is ever against us), and the evil spirits that
tempt to sin. When these are vanquished in ourselves, then let us, armed
with the armour of God, in charity succour others, even though they be not
for suffering us, even though in their folly they see not their bondage,
even though they would put their deliverers to death. So to love man as to
die in caring for his salvation is most blessed.’[149]
[Sidenote: Colet on the Pope.]
These passages may also be taken as evidence how fully Colet had caught
hold of the spirit, not merely of the froth, of the Dionysian doctrine;
how he had approached it in earnest search after practical religion, and
not merely in the love of speculation. They will also do much to explain
how, drinking deeply at this well of mystic religion, he came back from
Italy, not a mere Neo-Platonic philosopher or ‘humanist,’ but a practical
Reformer. In Italy he had become acquainted with the scandals of Alexander
VI. In his abstract of Dionysius, in speaking of ‘_the highest Bishop whom
we call “the Pope,”_’ he bursts out into these indignant sentences:--‘If
he be a lawful bishop, he of himself does nothing, but God in him. But if
he do attempt anything of _himself_, he is then a breeder of poison. And
if he also bring this to the birth, and carry into execution his own will,
he is wickedly distilling poison to the destruction of the Church. This
has now indeed been done for many years past, and has by this time so
increased as to take powerful hold on all members of the Church; so that,
unless that Mediator who alone can do so, who created and founded the
church out of nothing for Himself (therefore does St. Paul often call it a
“creature”)--unless, I say, the Mediator Jesus lay to his hand with all
speed, our most disordered church cannot be far from death.... Men consult
not God on what is to be done, by constant prayer, but take counsel with
men, whereby they shake and overthrow everything. All (as we must own with
grief, and as I write with both grief and tears) seek their own, not the
things which are Jesus Christ’s, not heavenly things but earthly, what
will bring them to death, not what will bring them to life eternal.’[150]
[Sidenote: Colet on the wickedness of priests.]
The following passage also burns with Colet’s zeal for ecclesiastical
reform:--‘Here let every priest observe, by that sacrament of washing
[before celebration of the eucharist], how clean, how scoured, how fresh
he ought to be, who would handle the heavenly mysteries, and especially
the sacrament of the Lord’s body; how such ought to be so washed and
scoured and polished inwardly, as that not so much as a shadow be left in
the mind whereby the incoming light may be in any wise obscured, and that
not a trace of sin may remain to prevent God from walking in the temple of
our mind. Oh priests! Oh priesthood! Oh the detestable boldness of wicked
men in this our generation! Oh the abominable impiety of those miserable
priests, of whom this age of ours contains a great multitude, who fear not
to rush from the bosom of some foul harlot into the temple of the Church,
to the altar of Christ, to the mysteries of God! Abandoned creatures! on
whom the vengeance of God will one day fall the heavier, the more
shamelessly they have intruded themselves on the Divine office. O Jesu
Christ, wash for us, not our feet only, but our hands and our head!’[151]
[Sidenote: The zeal is Colet’s, not Dionysian.]
In conclusion, I must remind the reader that it would not be fair to take
this sketch of Colet’s abstract of the Dionysian treatises as in any sense
an abstract of the treatises themselves. What I have tried to do is, to
show in what Colet’s own mind was influenced by them. The passages I have
quoted are not passages from Dionysius but from Colet. The radical
conception is most often due to Dionysius; the passages themselves
represent the effervescence produced by the Dionysian conceptions in
Colet’s mind. The enthusiasm--the fire which they kindled there they would
not have kindled in every one’s breast. The fire was indeed very much
Colet’s own. I find passages which _burn_ in Colet’s abstract _freeze_ in
the original. Whilst, therefore, acknowledging the influence of the
Dionysian writings upon Colet’s mind, it must not be forgotten that this
influence was exerted upon the mind of a man not only already acquainted
with the writings of the modern Neo-Platonists and of the Greek Fathers,
but also already devoted to the study of the Scriptures, and bent upon
drawing out for himself from themselves their direct practical meaning.
[Sidenote: Germs of true scientific thought in Dionysius.]
The truth is, that just as in the Greek Fathers, with all their tendency
to allegorise Scripture, there was combined a rational critical element
which formed the germ of a sounder and more scientific method of
Scriptural interpretation--a germ which fructified whenever it fell into a
soil suited to its growth, whether in the fifth and sixth or in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries--so in the Pseudo-Dionysian philosophy,
with all its unscientific tendency to revel in the wildest speculation,
there were combined germs of true scientific thought, which in like manner
were sure to fructify in such a mind as Colet’s.
[Sidenote: The relativity of all knowledge.]
Thus in the Dionysian doctrine that God is inscrutable--that all human
knowledge is relative--that man cannot rise to a knowledge of the
absolute--that therefore no conceptions men can form of God can be
accurate, and no language in which they speak of Him can be more than
clumsy analogy--in this principle there is the germ of a rational
understanding of the necessary conditions of Divine revelation involving
the admission of the necessity of _accommodation_ and the _human_ element
in Scripture. Again, in the doctrine that whilst, in this sense, the
_knowledge_ of God is impossible to man, the _love_ of God is not so,
there lies the basis of truth on which alone science can be reconciled
with religion, and religion itself become a power of life.
Lastly, in the very attempt, so striking throughout Dionysius, to find
out in the sacerdotal and sacramental system a symbolic meaning, who does
not recognise the attempt to find out a _rational intention_ in its
institution, which should make it believable in an age of reviving
philosophy and science?
V. COLET LECTURES ON ‘I. CORINTHIANS’ (1497?).
[Sidenote: Colet’s lectures on Corinthians. MSS. at Cambridge.]
If the manuscript exposition of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians
preserved at Cambridge, apparently in Colet’s own handwriting, with his
own latest corrections,[152] may be taken as evidence of what his lectures
on this epistle were, it may be of some value, apart from its own
intrinsic interest, in enabling us to judge how far he adhered to the same
leading views and method of exposition which he had before adopted, and
how far, in preceding chapters, we have been able to judge rightly of what
they were.
I think it will be found that this exposition of the Epistle to the
Corinthians is in perfect harmony with all which had preceded it, and that
it shows evident traces of those phases of thought through which Colet had
been passing since his arrival at Oxford.
Its striking characteristic, like that on the ‘Romans,’ would seem to be
the pains taken to regard it throughout as the letter of a living apostle
to an actual church.
[Sidenote: Colet’s love for St. Paul.]
On the one hand, it teems with passages which show the depth of Colet’s
almost personal affection for St. Paul, and the clearness with which he
realised the special characteristics of St. Paul’s character; his extreme
consideration for others,[153] his modesty,[154] his tolerance, his wise
tact and prudence,[155] his self-denial for others’ good.[156]
[Sidenote: Colet studies the character of the Corinthians.]
On the other hand, no less conspicuous is the attempt on Colet’s part to
realise the condition and peculiar character and circumstances of the
Corinthians, to whom the apostle was writing, as the true key to the
practical meaning of the epistle.
[Sidenote: Pride of the Greek nation.]
Thus Colet, in treating of the commencement of the epistle--an epistle
intended to correct the conduct of the Corinthians in some practical
points in which they had erred--stops to admire the wisdom of St. Paul’s
method in speaking first of that part of their conduct which he could
praise, before he proceeded to blame. And this he did, Colet thought,
‘that by this gentle and mild beginning he might draw them on to read the
rest of his epistle, and lead them to listen more easily to what he had to
blame in their conduct. For (Colet continues) had he at once at starting
been rougher, and accused them more severely, he might indeed have driven
away from himself and his exhortations minds as yet tender and
inexperienced in religion, especially those of that Greek nation, so
arrogant and proud, and prone to be disdainful.[157] Prudently, therefore,
and cautiously had the matter to be handled, having due regard to persons,
places, and seasons, in his observance of which Paul was surely the one
most considerate of all men, who knew so well how to accommodate the means
to the end, that while he sought nothing else but the glory of Jesus
Christ upon earth, and the increase of faith and charity, this man with
divine skill neither did nor omitted anything ever amongst any which
should impede or retard these objects.’[158]
[Sidenote: Colet describes the state of the Corinthian Church.]
The same method receives a further illustration from the way in which
Colet draws a picture of the condition of the Corinthian church, evidently
feeling while he did so, how closely in some points it resembled the
condition of the church in his own day. He surely must have had the
Schoolmen in his mind, as he described some among the Corinthians,
‘derogating from the authority of the Apostles, and especially of St.
Paul, whose name ought to have had the greatest weight amongst them,
setting up institutions in the church according to their own fancy and in
their own wisdom, making the people believe that they knew all about
everything which pertained to the Christian religion, and that they could
easily solve and give an opinion upon every point of doubt that might
arise. So that, in this infant church, many things had come to be allowed
which were abhorrent from the institutions of Paul, wherefrom had arisen
divisions and factions, between which were constant contentions and
altercations, so that all things were going wrong.’[159]
[Sidenote: St. Paul’s modesty and tact.]
Colet’s almost personal affection for St. Paul enabled him also to
realise how, being the ‘first parent of the Corinthian church,’ he was
‘troubled’ at this state of things, not so much at their having tried to
undermine his own authority, as at the danger they were in of making
shipwreck of their faith, after all his pains in piloting their vessel.
‘Therefore, as far as he dared and could’ (writes Colet), ‘he upbraided
those who wished to seem wise, and who conducted the affairs of the
Christian republic more according to their own fancies than according to
the will of God. Which, however, he did everywhere most modestly; the most
pious man seeking rather the reformation of the evils than the blame of
any.’ And therefore it was (Colet thought), that St. Paul in his whole
epistle, and especially in the first part of it, strove to assert that men
of themselves can know and do nothing, to eradicate the false foundation
of trust in themselves, and to lead them to Christ, who alone is the
wisdom of God and the power of God.[160]
And here again, after following St. Paul’s statement, that the wisdom of
man being foolishness, God had chosen the foolish rather than the wise to
hear him and to preach his gospel, Colet was led off into a train of
thought which harmonises well with what has been stated in previous
chapters, in that it shows how fully he had accepted the Dionysian
writings as the genuine writings of St. Paul’s disciple, and how closely
he associated in his mind the name of the disciple with that of the
master.
[Sidenote: Dionysius the Areopagite.]
For he exclaims, ‘What if sometimes some men, endowed with secular wisdom
such as Paul and his disciple, Dionysius the Areopagite, and a few
others, were chosen both to receive the truths of his wisdom, and to teach
them to others, these indeed in teaching others what they had learned from
God, took the greatest pains to appear to know nothing according to this
world, thinking it unworthy to mix up human reason with Divine
revelations.... Hence Paul, in wise and learned Greece, was not afraid to
seem in himself a fool and weak, and to profess that he knew nothing but
Jesus Christ and Him crucified.’[161]
Then follows a passage in which Colet states, in his own language, what
Paul meant when he preached ‘Christ crucified;’[162] a passage very
similar to that already quoted from his abstract of Dionysius, and bearing
the same marks of the modes of thought of a man who, as is affirmed of
Colet, was more inclined to follow Dionysius, Origen, and Jerome, than St.
Augustine.
[Sidenote: The election of men by God not capricious.]
Nor did Colet in this exposition show himself to be any more inclined to
follow Augustine upon the question of election than he showed himself in
his exposition of ‘the Romans.’ He is indeed ready enough to admit, that
men never could of themselves rise out of the darkness of worldly wisdom
to ‘accept the wonderful miracle of Christ,’--‘such is the miserable and
lost condition of men;’ and yet he does not fall into the pitfall of
Augustine’s doctrine, that men were chosen wholly without reference to
their own characters. ‘It would seem,’ he said, ‘that it was not without
reason that God chose, out of the crowd of men grovelling in the darkness
of worldly wisdom, those who had not fallen so far into the depths of this
darkness, and so could more easily be touched by the divine light.... If
God himself be nobility, wisdom, and power, who does not see that Peter,
John, and James, and others like them, even before the truth of God had
shone in the world, surpassed others in wisdom and strength, in proportion
as they were free from their foolishness and impotence, so that no wonder
if God chose those _held_ foolish and impotent, since indeed they were
really the most noble of all the world, most separate, and standing out
farthest from the vileness of the world; so that just as that land which
rises highest is touched by the rays of the rising sun most easily and
most quickly, so in the same way it was of necessity that, at the rising
of that light which lighteth every man coming into this world, it should
first light up those who rose highest amongst men, and stood out, like
mountains in the valleys of men.’[163]
[Sidenote: Accommodation.]
The striking characteristic of Colet’s letters to Radulphus was the stress
laid upon the principle of _accommodation_ on the part of the teacher to
the limited capacities of the taught. This is another point which crops up
again in the MS. on Corinthians. When Colet turned to the practical
teaching of St. Paul to the Corinthians, he seems to have been struck with
the fact, that the rules which St. Paul laid down with reference to
marriage and the like, were to be explained upon this principle.[164]
[Sidenote: Colet on marriage.]
Carried away by the authority of the Dionysian writings, Colet seems not
only to have held the doctrine of the celibacy of the clergy, but even to
have regarded marriage as allowed to the laity only by way of concession
to the weakness of the flesh. He had expressed this view in his MS.
treatise on ‘the Sacraments,’ and he repeated it, under cover of St.
Paul’s allusions to marriage in the Epistle to the Corinthians.
[Sidenote: Dionysian influence visible.]
[Sidenote: The celestial spheres and hierarchy.]
The influence of the Dionysian writings is indeed very frequently evident.
Again and again the phraseology used by Colet betrays it, and sometimes a
Dionysian turn of thought leads to a long digression. As might be
expected, a notable example of this occurs when Colet treats of the
chapters in the epistle with which the Dionysian theory of the celestial
hierarchy was intimately connected; in which St. Paul speaks, on the one
hand, of the church as one body with many members, and, on the other, of
celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial, and their differing order of
glory. It was probably about the time that Colet was lecturing on
Corinthians that Linacre was translating the work of Proclus, a
Neo-Platonist of the Alexandrian School, ‘De Spherâ;’ and Grocyn writing a
preface to Linacre’s translation in the form of a letter to Aldus, the
great printer at Venice, by whom it was afterwards published in 1499, in
an edition of the ‘Astronomi veteres.’[165] Astronomy was one of the
sciences which the revival of learning had brought into prominence.[166]
At this very moment Copernicus was pursuing in Italy those studies which
resulted in the overturning of the Ptolemaic system. That system, however,
which had become inseparably interwoven with scholastic theology, was as
yet in undisputed ascendancy. Its crystalline spheres had for generations
been devoutly believed in by the Schoolmen, and classed by them among
‘things celestial;’ and as Luther stood in awe at their magic motions, as
‘no doubt done by some angel,’[167] so poor Colet was led, by Dionysian
influence, to draw strange fanciful analogies between their ‘differing
order of glory’ and that of the ‘celestial hierarchy.’[168] Thus it came
to pass that his exposition of the Epistle to the Corinthians was even
disfigured with diagrams to illustrate these fancied analogies.
[Sidenote: Colet’s zeal for reform.]
Whilst thus pointing out the evidence that Colet was led astray by his
unsuspecting confidence in the genuineness of the Dionysian writings, into
doubtful speculations of this kind, and notions upon even practical
points, from which his own English common sense, if left to itself, might
have protected him, it is but fair to point out also the evidence
contained in this manuscript, of that zeal for ecclesiastical reform which
the purity of the Dionysian ideal of the priesthood at all events helped
to inflame. There is one passage especially, in which he bursts out into
an indignant rebuke of those ‘narrow and small minds’ who do not see that
constant contention and litigation about secular matters on the part of
the clergy ‘is a scandal to the church.’ Their folly, he thinks, would be
ridiculous, were it not rather to be wept over than laughed at, seeing
that it so injures and almost destroys the church. ‘These lost fools (he
continues) of which this our age is full, amongst whom there are some who,
to say the least, ought not to be clergymen at all, but who nevertheless
are regarded as bishops in the church--these lost fools, I say, utterly
ignorant of gospel and apostolic doctrine, ignorant of Divine justice,
ignorant of Christian truth, are wont to say, that the cause of God, the
rights of the church, the patrimony of Christ, the possessions of priests,
_ought_ to be defended by them, and that it would be a sin to neglect to
defend them. O narrowness, O blindness of these men!... with eyes duller
than fishes!’ Colet then points out how the church is brought into
disrepute with the laity by their worldly proceedings; whereas, if the
clergy lived in the love of God and their neighbour, how soon would their
‘true piety, religion, charity, goodness towards men, simplicity,
patience, tolerance of evil ... conquer evil with good! How would it stir
up the minds of men everywhere to think well of the church of Christ! How
would they favour it, love it, be good and liberal towards it, heap gift
upon gift upon it, when they saw in the clergy no avarice, no abuse of
their liberality!’... Finally, after saying that to a priesthood seeking
first the promotion and extension of the kingdom of God upon earth,
neither asking nor expecting anything, all things would have been added;
and asking with what face those, who differ from the laity only in dress
and external appearance, can demand much from the laity, Colet exclaims,
‘Good God! how should we be ashamed of this descent into the world, if we
were mindful of the love of God towards us, of the example of Christ, of
the dignity of the Christian religion, of our name and profession.’[169]
[Sidenote: Imitation of Christ.]
[Sidenote: Character of Christ.]
Passing from this one example of Colet’s zeal for ecclesiastical reform,
there remains only to be mentioned one other feature of this exposition of
Colet’s which must not be overlooked; a feature which might seem to show
that Colet was not wholly unacquainted with the writings of men of the
school of Tauler and Thomas à Kempis, and which seems to connect itself
with a remark of Colet’s, reported by Erasmus, that he had met on his
travels with some German monks, amongst whom were still to be found traces
of primitive religion.[170] I allude to the warmth with which Colet urges
the necessity of following the perfect but not impossible[171] _example of
Christ_, of Christians being bound in a relationship with Him, so close
that their joint love for Christ shall form a bond of brotherhood between
themselves more close than that of blood:[172] so that what is for the
good of the brethren will become the test of what is lawful in Christian
practice[173]--the earnestness with which he tried to realise the secret
of that wonderful example, concluding that it lay in Christ’s keeping
himself as retired as possible from the world--from the lust of the flesh,
the lust of the eye, and the pride of life--and as close as possible to
God--in his whole soul being dedicated to God. ‘He was,’ writes Colet,
altogether ‘pious, kind, gentle, merciful, patient of evil, bearing
injuries, in his own integrity shunning empty popular fame, forbidding
both men and demons to publish his mighty power, in his goodness always
doing good even to the evil, as his Father makes His sun to rise on the
just and on the unjust.... His body He held altogether in obedience and
service to his blessed mind ...; eating after long fasts, sleeping after
long watching ...; caring nothing for what belongs to wealth and fortune.
His eye was single, so that his whole body was full of light.... Such is
the leader whom we have on the heavenly road ...; whom, without doubt, if
we do not follow with our whole strength toward heaven, as far as we are
able, we shall never get there!’[174]
[Sidenote: Colet’s love for St. Paul, but greater love for Christ.]
If Colet had risen out of Neo-Platonism to Dionysius and from Dionysius to
St. Paul, it is evident that he did not rest even there. How in the
following few words, overflowing as they do with his personal love for
St. Paul, does he give vent to a still more tender love and reverence for
_Christ_!
[Sidenote: Colet’s love for Christ.]
‘Here I stand amazed, and exclaim those words of _my Paul_, “Oh the
depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” O wisdom!
wonderfully good to men and merciful, how justly thy loving-kindness
can be called the “depth of riches”!--Thou who commending thy love
towards us hast chosen to be so bountiful to us that Thou givest
thyself for us, that we may return to Thee and to God. O holy, O kind,
O beneficent wisdom! O voice, word, and truth of God in man!
truth-speaking and truth-acting! who hast chosen to teach us humanly
that we may know divinely; who hast chosen to be in man that we may be
in God; who lastly hast chosen in man to be humbled even unto
death--the death even of the cross--that we may be exalted even unto
life, the life even of God.’[175]
[Sidenote: Contrast between Colet’s method and the Schoolmen’s.]
It may safely be concluded, that if Colet’s manuscript expositions
preserved at Cambridge may be taken as evidence of the nature of his
public lectures, they may well have excited all the interest which they
seem to have done. Doctors of Divinity, coming to listen at first that
they might find something definite to censure, might well indeed find
something to learn. Amongst the students, probably, the seed found a soil
in some degree prepared to receive it. But it must have required an effort
on the part of the most candid and honest adherents of the traditional
school to reach the standpoint from which alone Colet’s method of free
critical interpretation could be found to be in perfect harmony with his
evident love and reverence for the Scriptures. _They_ attributed an extent
of Divine inspiration to the apostle which placed his words on a level in
authority with those of the Saviour himself; while Colet, we are told (and
some of the passages last quoted seem to confirm the statement), was wont
to declare, ‘that when he turned from the Apostles to the wonderful
majesty of Christ, their writings, much as he loved them, seemed to him to
become poor, as it were, in comparison’ [with the words of their
Lord].[176]
Yet they could hardly fail to see, whether they would or not, that while
their own system left the Scriptures hidden in the background, Colet’s
method brought them out into the light, and invested them with a sense of
reality and sacredness which pressed them home at once to the heart.
VI. GROCYN’S DISCOVERY (1498 ?).
Colet was not alone at Oxford in his regard for the Pseudo-Dionysian
writings.
[Sidenote: Grocyn discovers that the Pseudo-Dionysius was not the disciple
of St. Paul.]
Grocyn was so impressed with the genuineness and value of the ‘Celestial
Hierarchy,’ that he consented to deliver a course of lectures upon it,
about this time, in St. Paul’s Cathedral. But having commenced his course
by very strongly asserting its genuineness, and harshly condemning
Laurentius Valla and others who had started doubts, it chanced that when
he had proceeded with his lectures for some weeks, he became himself
convinced, by strong internal evidence, that the work was not written by a
disciple of St. Paul; and being an honest man seeking for truth, and not
arguing for argument’s sake, was obliged candidly to confess the
unpleasant discovery to his audience.[177]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Effect of the discovery on Colet’s mind.]
What effect this unexpected discovery of Grocyn’s had upon the mind of
Colet we are not distinctly informed. Whether Grocyn was able to convince
him of the truth of his mature judgment does not directly appear.[178] He
had so earnestly embraced the Dionysian writings, and they had produced so
profound an impression upon his mind, that it may readily be believed that
he would be very unwilling to admit that they were spurious. Nor, perhaps,
was it needful that he should do so. For, however clearly it might be
proved that they were not written by the disciple of St. Paul, it did not
therefore follow that they were merely a forgery. The Pseudo-Dionysius,
whoever he was, must have been not the less a man of vast moral power and
deep Christian feeling; and possibly he may have had no fraudulent
intention in using the pseudonym of the Areopagite, if he did so. The
conscience of the age in which he lived, so lax on the point of pious
fraud, may possibly have sanctioned his doing so.
It has already been seen that, in accepting the Dionysian speculations,
Colet did so because he believed Dionysius himself to have simply
committed to writing what he had heard from the Apostles themselves, and
because he felt bound to believe that he ‘_took the greatest pains to
appear to know nothing according to this world, thinking it unworthy to
mix up human reason with divine revelations_.’[179]
Supposing that Grocyn’s discovery had convinced Colet that the
speculations of the Dionysian writings were not of apostolic origin--were,
in fact, products of merely ‘human reason’ which the Pseudo-Dionysius had
‘mixed up’ with Scripture truth, as Augustine and the Schoolmen had mixed
up with it their scholastic speculations, it is clear that he would be
bound by the principle set forth in the above passage, to reject the
Dionysian speculations as he had already rejected those of the Schoolmen.
[Sidenote: Colet driven more than ever to the Bible.]
He would be bound to treat the speculations of the Pseudo-Dionysius as of
no more authority than those of St. Augustine or Origen, and the practical
result would be likely to be, that he would be thrown back more completely
than ever upon the Bible itself, and continue all the more earnestly to
apply to its interpretation the sound, common-sense, historical methods
which he had already applied so successfully to the exposition of the
Epistles of St. Paul.
In the meantime it may be readily imagined that, to a man of such deep
feeling and impulsive nature, as the occasional outbursts of burning zeal
in his writings show Colet to have been, such a disappointment would leave
a sore place to which he would not care often to recur in conversation
with his friends.
Such a shock as Grocyn’s discovery must have been to him, may have simply
produced in his mind a sense of bewilderment ending in a suspended
judgment. He may have returned to his accustomed work feeling more than
ever the uncertainty of human speculations, an humbler, a stronger, though
perhaps a sadder man, more than ever inclined to cling closely to the
Scriptures and his beloved St. Paul, and even ready sometimes to turn with
relief, as we are told he did with admiration, from the involved
logic[180] of the Apostle to the simple majesty of Christ!
CHAPTER III.
I. ERASMUS COMES TO OXFORD (1498).
[Sidenote: The character of Erasmus.]
In the spring or summer of 1498, the foreign scholar--Erasmus of
Rotterdam--arrived at Oxford, brought over to England by Lord Mountjoy
from Paris.[181] Erasmus was an entire stranger in England; he did not
know a word of English, but was at once most hospitably received into the
College of St. Mary the Virgin, by the prior Richard Charnock. Colet had
indeed, as already mentioned, heard Erasmus spoken of at Paris as a
learned scholar,[182] but as yet no work of his had risen into note, nor
was even his name generally known. He was scarcely turned thirty--just the
age of Colet;[183] but in his wasted sallow cheeks and sunken eyes were
but few traces left of the physical vigour of early manhood. In place of
the glow of health and strength, were lines which told that midnight oil,
bad lodging, and the harassing life of a poor student, driven about and
ill-served as he had been, had already broken what must have been at best
a frail constitution. But the worn scabbard told of the sharpness and
temper of the steel within. His was a mind restless for mental work, now
fighting through the obstacles of ill-health and poverty, in pursuit of
its natural bent, as it had once had to fight its way out of monastic
thraldom to secure the freedom of action which such a mind required.
[Sidenote: His object in coming to Oxford.]
Though well schooled and stored with learning, yet he had not come to
Oxford to teach, or to make a name by display of intellectual power, but
simply to add new branches of knowledge to those already acquired. Greek
was now to be learned there--thanks to the efforts of Grocyn and
Linacre--and Erasmus had come to Oxford bent upon adding a knowledge of
Greek to his Latin lore. To belong to that little knot of men north of
the Alps who already knew Greek--whose number yet might be counted on his
fingers--this had now become his immediate object of ambition. What he
meant to do with his tools when he had got them, probably was a question
to be decided by circumstances rather than by any very definite plan of
his own. To gain his living by taking pupils, and to live the life of a
scholar at some continental university, was probably the future floating
indistinctly before him.
[Sidenote: Erasmus is introduced to Colet.]
Prior Charnock seems to have at once appreciated Erasmus. He did all in
his power to give him a warm welcome to the university.[184] He seems to
have taken him at once to hear Colet lecture;[185] and he very soon
informed Colet that his new guest turned out to be no ordinary man.[186]
Upon this report Colet wrote to Erasmus a graceful and gentlemanly
letter,[187] giving him a hearty welcome to England and to Oxford, and
professing his readiness to serve him.
Erasmus replied, warmly accepting Colet’s friendship, but at the same time
telling him plainly that he would find in him a man of slender or rather
of no fortune, with no ambition, but warm and open-hearted, simple,
liberal, honest, but timid, and of few words. Beyond this he must expect
nothing. But if Colet could love such a man--if he thought such a man
worthy of his friendship--he might then count him as his own.[188]
[Sidenote: Colet and Erasmus become warm friends.]
Colet _did_ think such a man worthy of his friendship, and from that
moment Erasmus and he were the best of friends. The lord mayor’s son, born
to wealth and all that wealth could command, whilst steeling his heart
against the allurements of city and court life, eagerly received into his
bosom-friendship the poor foreign scholar, whom fortune had used so
hardly, whose orphaned youth had been embittered by the treachery of
dishonest guardians, and who, robbed of his slender patrimony and cast
adrift upon the world without resources, had hitherto scarcely been able
to keep himself from want by giving lessons to private pupils. Whether he
was likely to find in the foreign scholar the fulfilment of his yearnings
after fellowship, it will be for further chapters of this history to
disclose.
II. TABLE-TALK ON THE SACRIFICE OF CAIN AND ABEL (1498?).
[Sidenote: Table-talk at Oxford.]
It chanced that, after the delivery of a Latin sermon, the preacher--an
accomplished divine--was a guest at the long table in one of the Oxford
halls. Colet presided. The divine took the seat of honour to the left of
Colet; Charnock, the hospitable prior, sat opposite; Erasmus next to the
divine; and a lawyer opposite to him. Below them, on either side, a mixed
and nameless group filled up the table. At first the tide of table-talk
ebbed and flowed upon trivial subjects. The conversation turned at length
upon the sacrifices of Cain and Abel--why the one was accepted and the
other not.
[Sidenote: Colet’s views upon sacrifice.]
[Sidenote: The difference between Cain and Abel in the _men_, not in the
offerings.]
Colet--if we may judge from the earnest way in which, in his exposition of
the Epistle to the Romans, he had urged the uselessness of outward
sacrifices, unless accompanied by that _living sacrifice_ of heart and
mind which they were meant to typify--was not likely to advocate any view
which should attribute the acceptance of the one offering and the
rejection of the other, merely to any difference in the offerings
themselves. He would be sure to place the difference in the _character of
the men_. Colet seems on this occasion to have done so, and to have
fancied he saw in the different occupations chosen by the two brothers
evidence of the different spirit under which they acted. The exact course
of the conversation we have no means of following. All we know is, that
Colet took one side, and Erasmus and the divine the other, and that the
chief bone of contention was the suggestion thrown out by Colet, that Cain
had in the first instance offended the Almighty by his distrust in the
Divine beneficence, and too great confidence in his own art and industry,
and that this was proved by his having been the first to attempt to till
the cursed ground; while Abel, with greater resignation, and resting
content with what nature still spontaneously yielded, had chosen the
gentle occupation of a shepherd.[189]
There may have been something fanciful in the view urged by Colet, but it
is evident that it covered a truth which he could not give up, however
hard and long his opponents might argue.
Erasmus was astonished at Colet’s earnestness and power. He seemed to him
‘like one inspired. In his voice, his eye, his whole countenance and
mien, he seemed raised, as it were, out of himself.’[190]
[Sidenote: Erasmus makes up a story about Cain.]
Erasmus and the divine both felt themselves beaten; but it is not always
easy for the vanquished to yield gracefully, and the discussion, growing
warmer as it proceeded, might have risen even to intemperate heat, had not
Erasmus dexterously wound it round to a happy conclusion by pretending to
remember that he had once met with a curious story about Cain in an old
wormeaten manuscript whose title-page time had destroyed. The disputants
were all attention, and Erasmus, having thus tickled their curiosity, was
induced to tell the story, after extracting a promise from the listeners
that they would not treat it as a fable. He then drew upon his ready wit,
and improvised the following story:--
‘This Cain was a man of art and industry, and withal greedy and covetous.
He had often heard from his parents how, in the garden from which they had
been driven, the corn grew as tall as alder-bushes unchoked by tares,
thorns, or thistles. When he brooded over these things, and saw how meagre
a crop the ground produced, after all his pains in tilling it, he was
tempted to resort to treachery. He went to the angel who was the appointed
guardian of paradise, and, plying him with crafty arts, tempted him with
promises to give him secretly just a few grains from the luxuriant crops
of Eden. He argued that so small a theft could not be noticed, and that if
it were, the angel could but fall to the condition men were in. Why was
his condition better than theirs? Men were driven out of the garden
because they had eaten the apple. He, being set to guard the gate, could
enjoy neither paradise nor heaven. He was not even free, as they were, to
wander where he liked upon earth! Many good things were still left to men.
With care and labour the world might be cultivated, and human misery so
far lessened by discoveries and arts of all kinds, that at length men
might not need to be envious even of Eden. It was true that they were
infested by diseases, but human art would find the cure for these in time.
Perhaps some day something might even be found which would make life
immortal. When man by his industry had made the earth into one great
garden, the angel would be shut out from it, as well as from heaven and
Eden. Let him do what he could for men without harm to himself, and then
men would do what they could for him in return. The worst man will carry
the weakest cause, if he be but the best talker. A few grains were
obtained by stealth, and carefully sown by Cain. These being sprung up,
produced an increased number. The multiplied seed was again sown, and the
process repeated time after time. Before many harvests had passed the
produce of the stolen seed covered a wide tract of country. When what was
taking place on earth became too conspicuous to be longer concealed from
heaven, God was exceedingly wroth. “I see,” He said, “how this fellow
delights in toil and sweat; I will heap it upon him to his fill.” He
spoke, and sent a dense army of ants and locusts to blight Cain’s
cornfields. He added to these hailstorms and hurricanes. He sent another
angel to guard the gate of paradise, and imprisoned the one who had
favoured man in a human body. Cain tried to appease God by burnt-offerings
of fruits, but found that the smoke of his sacrifice would not rise
towards heaven. Understanding from this that the anger of God was
determined against him, _he despaired_!’[191]
Thus, with this clever impromptu fable did Erasmus gracefully contrive to
throw the weight of his altered opinion into Colet’s scale, and at the
same time to restore the whole party to wonted good-humour. Meanwhile what
he had seen of Colet made a deep impression upon him. He himself declared
that he never had enjoyed an after-dinner talk so much. It was, he said,
wanting in nothing.[192]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The position of Colet and Erasmus at Oxford.]
This little glimpse given by Erasmus himself of his first experience of
Oxford life is of value, not only as revealing his own early impressions
of Colet and Oxford, but also as throwing some little light upon the
position which Colet himself had taken in the University after a year’s
labour at his post. That he should be chosen to preside at the long table
on this occasion was a mark at least of honour and respect; while the way
in which _he_ evidently gave the tone to the conversation, and became so
thoroughly the central figure in the group, shows that this respect was
true homage paid to character, and not to mere wealth and station. Then,
again, the fact that Erasmus, a stranger, without purse or name, should
have had assigned to him the second seat of honour, second only to the
special guest of the day, was in itself a proof of the same hearty
appreciation by Charnock and Colet of character, without regard to rank
or station. Would it have been so everywhere? Had Erasmus been so treated
at Paris?[193]
[Sidenote: Erasmus delighted with Colet and Charnock.]
No wonder that the letters of Erasmus, written during these his first
months spent at Oxford, should bear witness to the delight with which he
found himself received, all stranger as he was, into the midst of a group
of warm-hearted friends, with whom, for the first time in his life, he
found what it was to be at _home_. ‘I cannot tell you,’ he wrote to his
friend Lord Mountjoy, ‘how delighted I am with your England. With two such
friends as Colet and Charnock, I would not refuse to live even in
Scythia!’[194]
III. CONVERSATION BETWEEN COLET AND ERASMUS ON THE SCHOOLMEN (1498 or
1499).
But although Erasmus had formed the closest friendship with Colet, and was
learning more and more to understand and admire him, it was long before he
was sufficiently one in heart and purpose to induce Colet to unburden to
him his whole mind.
[Sidenote: Scholastic skill of Erasmus.]
He did so only by degrees. When he thought his friend really in earnest in
any passing argument he would tell him fully what his own views were. But
Colet hated the Schoolmen’s habit of arguing for argument’s sake, and felt
that Erasmus was as yet not wholly weaned from it. It was a habit which
had been fostered by the current practice of asserting wiredrawn
distinctions and abstruse propositions for the mere display of logical
skill; and Colet’s reverence for truth shrunk from this public vivisection
of it merely to feed the pride of the dissector. It pained and disgusted
him.
Erasmus had been educated at Paris in the ‘straitest sect’ of Scholastic
theologians. He had there studied theology in the college of the Scotists,
and been trained in that logical subtlety for which the school of Duns
Scotus was distinguished.[195]
[Sidenote: Colet dislikes the Scotists.]
But he found Colet, instead of regarding the Scotists as wonderfully
clever, declaring that ‘they seemed to him to be stupid and dull and
anything but clever. For to cavil about different sentences and words, now
to gnaw at this and now at that, and to dissect everything bit by bit,
seemed to him to be the mark of a poor and barren mind.’[196]
But Colet had not quarrelled only with the logical method of the
Schoolmen; he owed the scholastic philosophy itself a still deeper grudge.
[Sidenote: What the system of the Schoolmen was.]
The system of the Schoolmen professed to embrace the whole range of
universal knowledge. It was not confined strictly to religion; it
included, also, questions of philosophy and science. And these were
settled by isolated texts from the Bible, or dicta of the earlier
Schoolmen, and not by the investigation of facts. A theology so dogmatic
and capricious could consistently admit of no progress. Every discovery of
science or philosophy, contrary to the dicta of the Schoolmen, must be
regarded as a crime. It was the logical result of an inherent vice in the
system that Brunos and Galileos, in after ages, were tortured by
successors of the Schoolmen into the denial of inconvenient truths.
[Sidenote: The scholastic system not adapted to an age of progress and
discovery.]
This might do all very well in stagnant times, but in an age when the new
art of printing was reviving ancient learning, and new worlds were turning
up in hitherto untracked seas, men who, like Colet, entered into the
spirit of the new era, soon found out that the _summæ theologiæ_ of the
Schoolmen were no sum of theology at all; that their science and
philosophy were grossly deficient; and that if Christianity must in truth
stand or fall with scholastic dogmas, then the accession of new light
would be likely to lead honest enquirers after truth to reject it, and to
accept in its place the refined semi-pagan philosophy which had
accompanied the revival of learning in Italy. Yet these were the
alternatives which the Schoolmen, in common with the champions of dogmatic
creeds in all ages, tried to force upon mankind. Their cry was, as that of
their scholastic successors has been, and is, ‘_Our_ Christianity or
_none_.’
[Sidenote: Colet’s faith in facts and free enquiry.]
[Sidenote: Colet rests on the person of Christ and the ‘Apostles’ Creed.’]
Colet had seen in Italy which of these two alternatives those who came
within the influence of the new learning were inclined to take. But he had
seen or heard, too, in Italy, of a third alternative. He had found a
Christianity, not scholastic, not dogmatic, which did not seem to him to
have anything to fear from free enquiry, for it was itself one of those
facts which free enquiry had brought once more to light: the reproduction
of its ancient records in their original languages was itself one of the
results of the new learning. He had found in the New Testament a simple
record of the facts of the life of Christ, and a few apostolic letters to
the churches. It had brought him, not to an endless web of propositions
to the acceptance of which he must school his mind, but to a _person_ whom
to love, in whom to trust, and for whom to work. He would not rest even in
the teaching of his beloved St. Paul. He had been taught by the Apostle to
look up from him to the ‘wonderful majesty of Christ;’[197] and loyalty to
Christ had become the ruling passion of his life.[198]
Having rejected the _summæ theologiæ_ of the Schoolmen, even before his
faith had been shaken, by Grocyn’s discovery, in Dionysian speculations,
his disappointment also in the latter would seem to have driven him back
upon the Scriptures, upon the writings of St. Paul, above all upon Christ
himself; until at last he had seemed to find in the simple facts of the
Apostles’ Creed the true sum of Christian theology. Having entrenched his
faith behind its simple bulwarks, he could look calmly out upon the world
of philosophy and nature, with a mind free to accept truth wherever he
might find it, without anxiety as to what the revival of ancient learning,
or the discoveries of new-born science, might reveal, anxious chiefly to
find out his own life’s work and duty, and right heartily to do it.
[Sidenote: Colet’s advice to theological students to keep to the Bible and
the Apostles’ Creed.]
And having escaped the trammels of scholastic theology himself, he could
urge others also to do the same. When, therefore, young theological
students came to him in despair, on the point of throwing up theological
study altogether, because of the vexed questions in which they found it
involved, and dreading lest in these days, when everything was called in
question, they might be found unorthodox, he was wont, it seems, to tell
them ‘to keep firmly to the Bible and the Apostles’ Creed, and let
divines, if they like, dispute about the rest.’[199]
But Erasmus as yet had far from attained the same standpoint.
[Sidenote: Erasmus came to England disgusted with theology.]
He was himself in the very position above described. His experience in the
Scotist college in Paris had not been lost upon him. It was not only that
its filthy chambers and diet of rotten eggs[200] had ruined his
constitution for life. He had contracted within its walls a disgust of all
theological study. He describes himself as, previously to his visit to
England, ‘abhorring the study of theology;’ and gives, as his double
reason for it, the fear lest he might run foul of settled opinions; and
lest, if he did so, he should be branded with the name of ‘heretic.’[201]
[Sidenote: Erasmus still a Schoolman.]
Disgusted, however, as he was with theology, all his theological training
had hitherto been scholastic in its character, and, apart from his
disgust of theology in general, he does not seem as yet to have contracted
any special disgust of scholastic theology in particular. He was still too
much enamoured of the logic of the Schoolmen, and too often was found to
take the Schoolmen’s side in his discussions with his friend.
[Sidenote: Erasmus praises Aquinas.]
[Sidenote: Colet’s reply.]
Colet and Erasmus[202] had been conversing one day upon the character of
the Schoolmen. Colet had expressed his sweeping disapprobation of the
whole class. Erasmus, whose knowledge of their works was, as he afterwards
acknowledged, by no means deep, at length ventured, in renewing the
conversation at another time, to except Thomas Aquinas from the common
herd, as worthy of praise, alleging in his favour that he seemed to have
studied both the Scriptures and ancient literature--which doubtless he
had. Colet made no reply. And when Erasmus pursued the subject still
further, Colet again passed it off, feigning inattention. But when
Erasmus, in the course of further conversation, again expressed the same
opinion in favour of Aquinas, and spoke more strongly even than before,
Colet turned his full eye upon him in order to learn whether he really
were speaking in earnest; and concluding that it was so--‘What,’ he said
passionately, ‘do you extol to me such a man as Aquinas? If he had not
been very arrogant indeed, he would not surely so rashly and proudly have
taken upon himself to define _all_ things. And unless his spirit had been
somewhat worldly, he would not surely have corrupted the whole teaching of
Christ by mixing with it his profane philosophy.’[203]
Erasmus was taken aback, as he had been at the discussion at the public
table. He had again been arguing without sufficient knowledge to justify
his having any strong opinion at all. Which side he took on the question
at issue was a matter almost of indifference to him. But he saw plainly
that it was not so with Colet. His first allusion to Aquinas, Colet had
resolutely shunned. When compelled to speak his opinion, his soul was
moved to its depths, and had burst forth into this passionate reply. There
must be something real and earnest at the bottom of Colet’s dislike for
Aquinas, else he could not have spoken thus.
So Erasmus betakes himself to the more careful study of the great
schoolman’s writings.
[Sidenote: Erasmus studies Aquinas.]
One may picture him taking down from the shelf the ‘Summa Theologiæ,’ and,
as the first step toward the exploration of its contents, turning to the
prologue. He reads:--
[Sidenote: The ‘Summa.’]
‘Seeing that the teacher of catholic truth should instruct not only those
advanced in knowledge, but that it is a part of his duty to teach
_beginners_ (according to the words of the Apostle to the Corinthians,
“even as unto babes in Christ, I have fed you with milk and not with
strong meat”), it is our purpose in this book to treat of those things
which pertain to the Christian religion in a manner adapted to the
instruction of beginners.
‘For we have considered that novices in this learning have been very much
hindered in [the study of] works written by others; partly, indeed, on
account of the multiplication of useless questions, articles and
arguments, and partly [for other reasons]. To avoid these and other
difficulties we shall endeavour, relying on Divine assistance, to treat of
those things which belong to sacred learning, so far as the subject will
admit, with _brevity_ and clearness.’
[Sidenote: Scholastic ‘milk for babes.’]
What could be better or truer than this? Erasmus might almost have fancied
that Colet himself had written these words, so fully do they seem to fall
in with his views. But turning from the prologue, nothing surely could
open the eyes of Erasmus more thoroughly to the real nature of scholastic
theology than a further glance at the body of the treatise. For what was
he to think of a system of theology a ‘_brief_’ compendium of which
covered no fewer than 1150 folio pages, each containing 2000 words! And
what was he to think of the wisdom of that Christian doctor who prescribed
this ‘Summa’ as ‘_milk_’ specially adapted for the sustenance of
theological ‘_babes_’! To be told first to digest forty-three propositions
concerning the nature of God, each of which embraced several distinct
articles separately discussed and concluded in the eighty-three folios
devoted to this branch of the subject; then fifteen similar propositions
regarding the nature of _angels_, embracing articles such as these:--
Whether an angel can be in more than one place at one and the same
time?
Whether more angels than one can be in one and the same place at the
same time?
Whether angels have local motion?
And whether, if they have, they pass through intermediate space?[204]
--then ten propositions regarding _the Creation_, consisting of an
elaborate attempt to bring into harmony the work of the six days recorded
in Genesis with mediæval notions of astronomy; then forty-five
propositions respecting the nature of _man_ before and after the Fall, the
physical condition of the human body in Paradise, the mode by which it was
preserved immortal by eating of the tree of life, the place where man was
created before he was placed in Paradise, &c.; and then, having mastered
the above subtle propositions, stated ‘briefly and clearly’ in 216 of the
aforesaid folio pages, to be told for his consolation and encouragement
that he had now mastered _not quite one-fifth_ part of this ‘first book’
for beginners in theological study, and that these propositions, and more
than five times as many, were to be regarded by him as the settled
doctrine of the Catholic Church!--what student could fail either to be
crushed under the dead weight of such a creed, or to rise up, and, like
Samson, bursting its green withes, discard and disown it altogether?
[Sidenote: Erasmus goes over to Colet’s view.]
No marvel that Erasmus was obliged to confess that, in the process of
further study of the works of Aquinas, his former high opinion had been
modified.[205] He could understand now how it was that Colet could hardly
control his indignation at the thought, how the simple facts of
Christianity had been corrupted by the admixture of the subtle philosophy
of this ‘best of the Schoolmen.’
And yet we may well be free to own that Colet’s not unnatural hatred of
the scholastic philosophy had blinded him in some degree to the personal
merits of the early Schoolmen. Deeper knowledge of the history of their
times, and study of the personal character at least of some of them, might
have enabled him not only to temper his hatred, but even to recognise that
they occupied in their day a standpoint not widely different altogether
even from his own.
[Sidenote: The merit of the early Schoolmen.]
For as earnestly as Colet himself was now seeking to bring the
Christianity and advanced thought of _his_ age into harmony, the early
Schoolmen had tried to do the same thing in _theirs_. The misfortune of
the Schoolmen was, that they had inherited from St. Augustine, and the
Pseudo-Dionysius, the vicious tendency to fill up blanks in theology by
indulging in hypotheses, capable of receiving the sanction of
ecclesiastical authority, and then to be treated as established, although
altogether unverified by facts. They had also to harmonise the dogmatic
theology so manufactured with a scientific system as dogmatic as itself.
For while theologians had been indulging in hypotheses respecting
‘original sin,’ ‘absolute predestination,’ and ‘irresistible grace,’
natural philosophers had been indulging in similar hypotheses respecting
the ‘crystalline spheres,’ ‘epicycloids,’ and ‘_primum mobile_.’[206] And
seeing that the method by which the Schoolmen attempted to fuse these
_two_ dogmatic systems into _one_, itself consisted of a still further
indulgence in the same vicious mode of procedure, it was but natural that
their attempt as a whole, however well meant, should leave ‘confusion
worse confounded.’
[Sidenote: The demerits of their successors.]
Still it must not be forgotten that they did succeed by this vicious
process in reconciling theology and science to the satisfaction of their
own dogmatic age. This praise is, at least, their due. On the other hand,
their successors in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries could not put
forward any such claims for themselves. _They_ did not succeed in
harmonising the theology and the advanced thought of _their_ age. They
strained every nerve to keep them hopelessly apart. They blindly held on
to a worn-out system inherited from their far worthier predecessors, and
spent their strength in denouncing, in no measured terms, the scientific
spirit and inductive method of the ‘new learning.’
Hence there can be little doubt that Colet’s hatred of what in his day was
in truth a huge and bewildering mass of dreary and lifeless subtlety, was
a just and righteous hatred. And though it took some time for Erasmus
thoroughly to accept it, he could in after years, when Colet was no more,
endorse, from the bottom of his heart, Colet’s advice to young theological
students: ‘_Keep to the Bible and the Apostles’ Creed; and let divines, if
they like, dispute about the rest_.’
IV. ERASMUS FALLS IN LOVE WITH THOMAS MORE (1498).
Amongst the broken gleams of light which fall, here and there only, upon
the Oxford intercourse of Erasmus with Colet, there are one or two which
reveal an already existing friendship with Thomas More, but unfortunately
without disclosing how it had begun.
[Sidenote: Introduction of More to Erasmus.]
Erasmus, when passing through London on his way to Oxford, had probably
been introduced by Lord Mountjoy to his brilliant young friend. It is even
possible that there may be a foundation of fact in the story that they had
met for the first time, unknown to each other, at the lord mayor’s table,
or, as is more likely still, at the table of the _ex_-lord mayor, Sir
Henry Colet. Erasmus, having perhaps been told Colet’s saying, that there
was but one genius in England, and that his name was Thomas More, may have
been set opposite to him at table without knowing who he was. More in his
turn may have been told of the logical subtlety of the great scholar newly
arrived from the Scotist college in Paris, without having been personally
introduced to him. If this were so, the rest of the story may easily be
true. They are said to have got into argument during dinner, Erasmus, in
Scotist fashion, ‘defending the worser part,’ till finding in his young
opponent ‘a readier wit than ever he had before met withal,’ he broke
forth into the exclamation, ‘_Aut tu es Morus aut nullus_;’ to which the
ready tongue of More retorted--so runs the story, ‘_Aut tu es Erasmus aut
Diabolus_.’[207] Whether at the lord mayor’s table, or elsewhere, they
_had_ become acquainted, and a correspondence had grown up between them,
one letter of which, like a solitary waif, has been left stranded on the
shore of the gulf which has swallowed the rest. It reads thus:--
_Erasmus Thomæ Moro suo, S.D._
‘I scarcely can get any letters, wherefore I have showered down curses
on the head of this letter-carrier, by whose laziness or treachery I
fancy it must be that I have been disappointed of the most eagerly
expected letters of my dear More (Mori mei). For that you have failed
on your part I neither want nor ought to suspect. Albeit, I
expostulated with you most vehemently in my last letter. Nor am I
afraid that you are at all offended by the liberty I took, for you are
not ignorant of that Spartan method of fighting “usque ad cutem.”
This, joking aside, I do entreat you, sweetest Thomas, that you will
make amends with interest for the suffering occasioned me by the too
long continued deprivation of yourself and your letters. I expect, in
short, not a letter, but a huge bundle of letters, which would weigh
down even an Egyptian porter,’
* * * * *
‘Vale jucundissime More.[208]
‘Oxoniæ: Natali Simonis et Judæ. 1499.’
[Sidenote: Friendship between More and Erasmus.]
Such being the friendship already existing between them, and beginning to
show itself in the use of those endearing superlatives without which
Erasmus, from the first to the last, never could write a letter to More,
it is not surprising that, as winter came on, Erasmus should take the
opportunity afforded by the approaching vacation for a visit to London.
Accordingly we get one chance glimpse of him there, writing a letter to
one of his friends, and expressing his delight with everything he had met
with in England.
Staying as he most likely was with Mountjoy or with More, enjoying the
warmth of their friendship, and feeling himself at home in London as he
had done in Oxford, but never had done before anywhere else, it was
natural that the foreign scholar should paint, in the warmest colours,
this land of friends. Especially of Mountjoy, who had brought him to
England, and who found him the means of living at Oxford, he would
naturally speak in the highest terms. Such was the politeness, the
goodnature, and affectionateness of his noble patron, that he would
willingly follow him, he said, _ad inferos_, if need be.
[Sidenote: Erasmus delighted with England, and with Mountjoy, Colet,
Grocyn, Linacre, and More.]
Nor was it only the warm-heartedness of his English friends which filled
him with delight. His purpose in coming to Oxford he declared to be fully
answered. He had come to England because he could not raise the means for
a longer journey to Italy. To prosecute his studies in Italy had been for
years an object of anxious yearning; but now, after a few months’
experience of Oxford life, he wrote to his friend, who was himself going
to Italy, ‘that he had found in England so much polish and learning--not
showy, shallow learning, but profound and exact, both in Latin and
Greek--that now he would hardly care much about going to Italy at all,
except for the sake of having been there.’ ‘When,’ he added, ‘I listen to
my friend Colet it seems to me like listening to Plato himself. In Grocyn,
who does not admire the wide range of his knowledge? What could be more
searching, deep, and refined than the judgment of Linacre?’ And after this
mention of Colet, Grocyn, and Linacre, he adds: ‘Whenever did nature mould
a character more gentle, endearing, and happy than Thomas More’s?’[209]
[Sidenote: Erasmus falls in love with More.]
So that while here, as elsewhere, Colet seems to take his place again as
the chief of the little band of English friends, we learn from this letter
that the picture would not have been complete without the figure of the
fascinating youth with whom Erasmus, like the rest of them, had fallen in
love.
The letter itself was written to Robert Fisher, from London ‘tumultuarie,’
5th December, in 1498 or 1499.
V. DISCUSSION BETWEEN ERASMUS AND COLET ON ‘THE AGONY IN THE GARDEN,’ AND
ON THE INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES (1499).
[Sidenote: Erasmus attributes the agony of Christ to fear of death.]
The greater part of 1499 was spent by Erasmus apparently at Oxford. On one
occasion Colet and Erasmus were spending an afternoon together.[210] Their
conversation fell upon the agony of Christ in the garden. They soon, as
usual, found that they did not agree. Erasmus, following the common
explanation of the Schoolmen, saw only in the agony suffered by the
Saviour that natural fear of a cruel death to which in his human nature he
submitted as one of the incidents of humanity. It seemed to him that in
His character as truly _man_, left for the moment unaided by His divinity,
the prospect of the anguish in store for Him might well wring from Him
that cry of fearful and trembling human nature, ‘Father, if it be
possible, let this cup pass from me!’ while the further words, ‘not my
will but Thine be done,’ proved, he thought, that He had not only felt,
but conquered, this human fear and weakness. Erasmus further supported
this view by adducing the commonly received scholastic distinction between
what Christ felt as _man_ and what He felt as _God_, alleging that it was
only as _man_ that He thus suffered.
[Sidenote: Colet objects to this view.]
[Sidenote: Christ was thinking of the Jews, not of Himself.]
Colet dissented altogether from his friend’s opinion. It might be the
commonly received interpretation of recent divines, but in spite of that
he declared his own entire disapproval of it. Nothing could, he thought,
be more inconsistent with the exceeding love of Christ, than the
supposition that, when it came to the point, He shrank in dread from that
very death which He desired to die in His great love of men. It seemed
utterly absurd, he said, to suppose that while so many martyrs have gone
to torture and death patiently and even with joy--the sense of pain being
lost in the abundance of their love--Christ, who was love itself, who came
into the world for the very purpose of delivering guilty man by his own
innocent death, should have shrunk either from the ignominy or from the
bitterness of the cross. The sweat of great drops of blood, the exceeding
sorrow even unto death, the touching entreaty to His Father that the cup
might pass from Him--was all this to be attributed to the mere fear of
death? Colet had rather set it down to anything but that. For it lies in
the essence of love, he said, that it should cast out fear, turn sorrow
into joy, think nothing of itself, sacrifice everything for others. It
could not be that He who loved the human race more than anyone else should
be inconstant and fearful in the prospect of death. In confirmation of
this view he referred to St. Jerome, who alone of all the church fathers
had, he thought, shown true insight into the real cause of Christ’s agony
in the garden. St. Jerome had attributed the Saviour’s prayer, that the
cup might pass from Him, not to the fear of death but to the sense felt by
Him of the awful guilt of the Jews, who, by thus bringing about that death
which He desired to die for the salvation of _all mankind_, seemed to be
bringing down destruction and ruin on themselves--an anxiety and dread
bitter enough, in Colet’s view, to wring from the Saviour the prayer that
the cup might pass from Him, and the drops of bloody sweat in the garden,
seeing that it afterwards did wring from Him, whilst perfecting his
eternal sacrifice on the cross, that other prayer for the very ministers
of his torture, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!’
Such was the view expressed by Colet in reply to Erasmus, and in
opposition to the view which he was aware was generally received by
scholastic divines.
Whilst they were in the heat of the discussion it happened that Prior
Charnock entered the room. Colet, with a delicacy of feeling which Erasmus
afterwards appreciated, at once broke off the argument, simply remarking,
as he took leave, that he did not doubt that were his friend, when alone,
to reconsider the matter with care and accuracy, their difference of
opinion would not last very long.
[Sidenote: Erasmus writes to Colet.]
When Erasmus found himself alone and at leisure in his chambers he at
once followed Colet’s advice. He reconsidered Colet’s argument and his
own. He consulted his books. By far the most of the authorities, both
Fathers and Schoolmen, he found beyond dispute to be on his own side. And
his reconsideration ended in his being the more convinced that he had
himself been right and Colet wrong. Naturally finding it hard to yield
when there was no occasion, and feeling sure that this time he had the
best of the argument, he eagerly seized his pen, and with some parade,
both of candour and learning, stated at great length what he thought might
be said on both sides. After having written what, in type, would fill
about fifty of these pages, he confidently wound up his long letter by
saying that, so far as he could see, he had demonstrated his own opinion
to be in accordance with that of the Schoolmen and most of the early
Fathers, and, whilst not contrary to nature, clearly consistent with
reason. But he knew, he said, to whom he was writing, and whether he had
convinced _Colet_ he could not tell. For, he wrote in conclusion, ‘how
rash it is in me, a mere tyro, to dare to encounter a commander--for one,
_whom you call a rhetorician_, to venture upon theological ground, to
enter an arena which is not mine! Still I have not shrunk from daring
everything even with _you_, who are so skilled in all elegant and ancient
lore, who have brought with you from Italy such stores of Greek and Latin,
and who, on this very account, are not as yet appreciated as you ought to
be by theologians. Wherefore, in discussing with you, I have chosen to use
the old and free way of arguing; not only because I prefer it myself, but
also because I knew your dislike to the modern and new-fangled method of
disputation, which, keen and ready as it may seem to some, is in your view
complicated, superstitious, spiritless, and plainly sophistical. And
perhaps you are right.... Yet I would have you take care lest you should
not be able to stand _alone_ against so many thousands. Let us not,
contented with the plain homespun sense of Origen, Ambrose, Jerome,
Augustine, Chrysostom, and others as ancient, grudge to these modern
disputants their more elaborated doctrines.
‘And now I await your attack. I await your mighty war-trumpet. I await
those “Coletian” arrows, surer even than the arrows of Hercules. In the
meantime I will array the forces of my mind; I will concentrate my ranks;
I will prepare my reserves of books, lest I should not be able to stand
your first charge.
‘As to the rest, the matters which you have propounded from the Epistles
of St. Paul, since they are such as it would be dangerous to dispute of, I
had rather enter into them by word of mouth when we are together than by
letter. _Vale!_’
The reply of Colet was short, and very characteristic of the man.
[Sidenote: Colet replies.]
[Sidenote: Colet’s love of truth.]
‘Your letter, most learned Erasmus, as it is very long, so also is it most
eloquent and happy. It is a proof of a tenacious memory, and gives a
faithful review of our discussion.... But it contains nothing to alter or
detract from the opinions which I imbibed from St. Jerome. Not that I am
perverse and obstinate with an uncandid pertinacity, but that (though I
may be mistaken) I think I hold and defend the truth, or what is most like
the truth.... I am unwilling, just now, to grapple with your letter as a
whole; for I have neither leisure nor strength to do so at once, and
without preparation. But I will attack the first part of it--your first
line of battle as it were.... In the meantime do you patiently hear me,
and let us both, if, when striking our flints together, any spark should
fly out, eagerly catch at it. For we seek, not for victory in argument,
but for _truth_, which perchance may be elicited by the clash of argument
with argument, as sparks are by the clashing of steel against steel!’[211]
[Sidenote: Erasmus had followed the theory of the ‘manifold senses’ of
Scripture.]
Erasmus, at the commencement of his long letter, feeling, perhaps, that
after all there might be some truth in Colet’s view not embraced in his
own, had fallen back upon the strange theory, already alluded to as held
by scholastic divines, that the words of the Scriptures, because of their
magic sacredness and absolute inspiration, might properly be interpreted
in several distinct senses. ‘Nothing’ (he had said) ‘forbids our drawing
various meanings out of the wonderful riches of the sacred text, so as to
render the same passage in more than one way. I know that, according to
Job, “the word of God is manifold.” I know that the manna did not taste
alike to all. But if you so embrace _your_ opinion that you condemn and
reject the received opinion, then I freely dissent from you.’
[Sidenote: Colet’s view.]
This was the first line of battle which Colet, in his letter, declared
that he would at once attack. It was a notion of Scripture interpretation
altogether foreign to his own. He yielded to none in his admiration of
the wonderful fulness and richness of the Scriptures. He had made it the
chief matter of his remark to the priest who had called on him during the
winter vacation of 1496-7, and had written to the Abbot of Winchcombe an
account of the priest’s visit in order to press the same point upon him.
But from the method adopted in his expositions of St. Paul’s Epistles, and
the first chapter of Genesis, it appears that he did not hold the theory
of uniform verbal inspiration, which ignored the human element in
Scripture, round which had grown this still stranger theory of the
manifold senses, and upon which alone it could be at all logically held.
It is true that, in his abstract of the Dionysian writings, he had, upon
Dionysian authority, accepted, in a modified form,[212] the doctrine of
the ‘four senses’ of Scripture; and in his letters to Radulphus, whilst
confining himself to the literal sense, he guarded himself against the
denial of the same theory. But he had never sanctioned the gross abuse of
the doctrine to which Erasmus had appealed, which asserted that even the
_literal_ sense of the same passage might be interpreted to mean different
things. It was one thing to hold that some passages must be allegorically
understood and not literally, and that other passages have both a literal
and an allegorical meaning (which Colet seems to have held), or even that
_all_ passages have both a literal and an allegorical meaning (which Colet
did not hold). It was quite another thing to hold that the words of the
same passage might, in their _literal_ sense, mean several different
things, and be used as _texts_ in support of statements not within the
direct intention of their human writer.
[Sidenote: Aquinas on the ‘manifold senses.’]
Thomas Aquinas, in his ‘Summa,’ had indeed laid down a proposition, which
practically amounted to this. For in discussing the doctrine of the ‘four
senses’ of Scripture, he had not only stated that the spiritual sense of
Scripture was threefold, viz. allegorical, moral, and anagogical, but also
that the _literal sense was manifold_. He had laid down the doctrine, that
‘Inasmuch as the literal sense is that which _the author intends_, and
_God_ is the author of Holy Scripture, who comprehends all things in His
mind at one and the same time, it is not inconsistent, as Augustine says
in his twelfth Confession, if even according to the literal sense in the
one letter of the Holy Scriptures there are many senses.’[213]
It may, however, well be doubted whether Aquinas would have sanctioned
altogether the absurd length to which this doctrine was carried by
scholastic disputants.
[Sidenote: Colet on the ‘manifold senses.’]
Whether Colet, since Grocyn’s discovery, had or had not altogether
repudiated the doctrine of ‘manifold senses,’ as one of the notions which
he had once held on Dionysian authority, but which the authority of the
_Pseudo_-Dionysius was not sufficient to establish, it is clear that in
his reply to Erasmus he utterly repudiated the abuse of it to which
Erasmus had appealed. ‘In the first place’ (he wrote), ‘I cannot agree
with you when you state, along with many others, and as I think
mistakenly, that the Holy Scriptures, at least _uno in aliquo genere_, are
so prolific that they give birth to many senses. Not that I would not have
them to be as prolific as possible--their overflowing fecundity and
fulness I, more than others, admire--but that I consider their fecundity
to consist in their giving birth not to many [senses], but to only one,
and that the most true one.’
[Sidenote: Colet’s views on ‘Inspiration.’]
After remarking that whilst the lower forms of life produce the most
numerous offspring, the highest forms of life tend towards _unity_ of
offspring, he argues that the Holy Spirit gives birth in the Scripture,
according to its own power, to one and the same simple truth. What if from
the simple, divine, and truth-speaking words of the Scriptures of the
Spirit of Truth, whether heard or read, many and various persons draw many
and varying senses? He set that down, he said, not to the fecundity of the
Scriptures, but to the sterility of men’s minds, and their incapacity of
getting at the pure and simple truth. If they could but reach _that_,
they would as completely agree as now they differ. He then remarked how
mysterious the inspiration of the Scriptures was; how the Spirit seemed to
him, by reason of its majesty, to have a peculiar method of its own,
singularly absolute and free, blowing where it lists, making prophets of
whom it will, yet so that the spirit of the prophets is subject to the
prophets. He repeated, in conclusion, that he admired the fulness of the
Scriptures, not because each word may be construed in several senses--that
would be want of fulness--but because _quot sententiæ totidem sunt verba,
et quot verba tot sententiæ_. Having said this, he was ready to descend
into the arena, and to join battle with Erasmus on the matter in dispute,
but he could not do so now; he was called away by other engagements, and
must end his letter for the present.[214]
The letters which followed in which Colet further pursued the subject of
the Agony in the Garden, have unfortunately been lost. But enough remains
to give, by a passing glimpse, some idea of the pleasant colloquies and
earnest converse, both by mouth and letter, in which the happy months of
college intercourse glided swiftly by.
VI. CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN COLET AND ERASMUS ON THE INTENTION OF ERASMUS
TO LEAVE OXFORD (1499-1500).
[Sidenote: Erasmus at Court.]
The winter vacation of 1499-1500 had apparently dispersed for a while the
circle of Oxford students. Erasmus having, it would seem, some friend at
Court, had joined the Royal party, probably spending Christmas at
Woodstock or some other hunting station. He was at first delighted with
Court manners and field sports, and in a letter,[215] written about this
time, he jocosely told a Parisian friend, that the Erasmus whom he once
had known was now a hunter, and his manners polished up into those of an
experienced courtier. He was greatly struck, he added, with the beauty and
grace of the English ladies, and urged him to let nothing less than the
gout hinder his coming to England.
[Sidenote: But soon tires of Court life.]
But while Court life might captivate at first, Erasmus had soon found out
that its glitter was not gold. As the wolf in the fable lost his relish
for the dainties and delicate fare of the house-dog when he saw the mark
of the collar on his neck, so when Erasmus had seen how little of freedom
and how much of bondage there was in the courtier’s life he had left it
with disgust; choosing rather to return to Oxford to share the more
congenial society of what students might be found there during these
vacation weeks, than to remain longer with ‘be-chained courtiers.’[216] He
was waiting only for time and tide to return to Paris. At present the
weather was too rough for so bad a sailor; and, owing to political
disquiet and danger, it was difficult to obtain the needful permission to
leave the realm.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Erasmus proposes to leave Oxford.]
[Sidenote: Colet urges him to remain at Oxford.]
The fear that Erasmus was so soon to leave Oxford was one which troubled
Colet’s vacation thoughts. To be left alone at Oxford again to fight his
way single-handed was by no means a cheering prospect. But his saddest
feeling was one not merely of sorrow at parting with his new friend--it
was a feeling of disappointment. He had hoped for more than he had found
in Erasmus. That he could have won over Erasmus all at once to his own
views and plans he had never dreamed. The scholar had his own bent of
mind, and of course his own plans. Such was his love of learning for its
own sake, that he was bent on constant and persevering study; and his stay
at Oxford he looked upon merely as one step in the ladder, valuable
chiefly because it led to the next. But Colet longed for fellowship. In
his friend he had sought, and in some measure found, fellow-feeling. But
feeling and action to him were too closely linked to make that all he
wanted. Fellow-feeling was to him but a half-hearted thing unless it
ripened into fellow work; and he had hoped for this in Erasmus. He had
purposely left Erasmus to find out his views and to discern his spirit by
degrees. He had not tried to force him in anywise. He had shown his wisdom
in this. But now that Erasmus talked of leaving Oxford, it was Colet’s
duty to speak out. He could not let him go without one last appeal. He
therefore wrote to him, telling him plainly of his disappointment. He
urged him to remain at Oxford. He urged him, once for all, to come out
boldly, as he himself had done, and to do his part in the great work of
restoring that old and true theology of Christ, so long obscured by the
subtle webs of the Schoolmen, in its pristine brightness and dignity. What
could he do more noble than this? There was plenty of room for both of
them. He himself was doing his best to expound the New Testament. Why
should not Erasmus take some book of the Old Testament, say Genesis or
Isaiah, and expound it, as he had done the Epistles of St. Paul? If he
could not make up his mind to do this at once, Colet urged that, as a
temporary alternative, he should lecture on some secular branch of study.
Anything was better than that he should leave Oxford altogether.[217]
Erasmus received this letter soon after his return from his short
experience of Court life. The tone of disappointment and almost reproof
pervading it Erasmus felt was undeserved on his part, yet it evidently
made a deep impression upon him. Looking back upon his intercourse with
Colet at Oxford, he must have seen how much it had done to change his
views, and felt how powerfully Colet’s influence had worked upon him. Yet
he knew how far his views were from being matured like Colet’s, and how
foolish it would be to begin publicly to teach before his own mind was
fully made up. He knew that Colet had brought him over very much to his
way of thinking, and he was ready to confess himself a disciple of
Colet’s; but he must digest what he had learned, and make it thoroughly
his own, before he could publicly teach it. Perhaps he might one day be
able to join Colet in his work at Oxford; but he thought, and probably
wisely, that the time had not yet come. This at least may be gathered from
his reply to Colet’s letter. With some abridgment and unimportant
omissions, it may be translated thus:--
_Erasmus to Colet._[218]
[Sidenote: Reply of Erasmus to Colet’s entreaties.]
... ‘In what you say of your dislike to the modern race of divines,
who spend their lives in mere logical tricks and sophistical cavils,
in very truth I entirely agree with you.
[Sidenote: Agrees with Colet in disliking the Scholastic System.]
‘Not that, valuing as I do all branches of study, I condemn the
studies of these men _as such_, but that when they are pursued for
themselves alone, unseasoned by more ancient and elegant literature,
they seem to me to be calculated to make men sciolists and
contentious; whether they can make men wise I leave to others. For
they exhaust the mental powers by a dry and biting subtlety, without
infusing any vigour or spirit into the mind. And, worst of all,
theology, the queen of all science--so richly adorned by ancient
eloquence--they strip of all her beauty by their incongruous, mean,
and disgusting style. What was once so clear, thanks to the genius of
the old divines, they clog with some subtlety or other, thus involving
everything in obscurity while they try to explain it. It is thus we
see that theology, which was once most venerable and full of majesty,
now almost dumb, poor, and in rags.
‘In the meantime we are allured by a never-satiated appetite for
strife. One dispute gives rise to another, and with wonderful gravity
we fight about straws. Then, lest we should seem to have added nothing
to the discoveries of the old divines, we audaciously lay down certain
positive rules according to which God has performed his mysteries,
when sometimes it might be better for us to believe that a thing _was_
done, leaving the question of _how_ it was done to the omnipotence of
God. So, too, for the sake of showing our ingenuity, we sometimes
discuss questions which pious ears can hardly bear to hear; as, for
instance, when it is asked whether the Almighty could have taken upon
Him the nature of the devil or of an ass.
‘Besides all this, in our times those men in general apply themselves
to theology, the chief of all studies, who by reason of their
obtuseness and lack of sense are hardly fit for any study at all. I
say this not of learned and upright professors of theology, whom I
highly respect and venerate, but of that sordid and haughty pack of
divines who count all learning as worthless except their own.
[Sidenote: He honours Colet and his work.]
‘Wherefore, my dear Colet, in having joined battle with this
redoubtable race of men for the restoration, in its pristine
brightness and dignity, of that old and true theology which they have
obscured by their subtleties, you have in very truth engaged in a work
in many ways of the highest honour--a work of devotion to the cause of
theology, and of the greatest advantage to all students, and
especially the students of this flourishing University of Oxford.
Still, to speak the truth, it is a work of great difficulty, and one
sure to excite ill-will. Your learning and energy will, however,
conquer every difficulty, and your magnanimity will easily overlook
ill-will. There are not a few, even among divines themselves, both
able and willing to second your honest endeavours. There is no one,
indeed, who would not give you a hand, since there is not even a
doctor in this celebrated University who has not given attentive
audience to your public readings on the Epistles of St. Paul, now of
three years’ standing. And which is the most praiseworthy in this,
_their_ modesty in not being ashamed to learn from a young man without
doctor’s degree, or _your_ remarkable learning, eloquence, and
integrity of life, which they have thought worthy of such honour?
[Sidenote: Erasmus agrees with Colet but is not ready yet to join him
in fellow-work.]
‘I do not wonder that _you_ should put your shoulder under so great, a
burden, for you are able to bear it, but I do wonder greatly that you
should call _me_, who am nothing of a man, into the fellowship of so
glorious a work. For you exhort,--yes, you almost reproachfully urge
me, that, by expounding either the ancient Moses[219] or the eloquent
Isaiah, in the same way as you have expounded St. Paul, I should try,
as you say, to kindle up the studies of this University, now chilled
by these winter months. But I, who have learned to live in solitude,
know well how imperfectly I am furnished for such a task; nor do I lay
claim to sufficient learning to justify my undertaking it. Nor do I
judge that I have strength of mind enough to enable me to sustain the
ill-will of so many men stoutly main
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