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!