* * * * *
"MAN PROPOSES, BUT GOD DISPOSES."
(Vol. viii., p. 552.; Vol. ix., p. 87.)
1. If your correspondent H. P. will again examine my communication on this
subject, he will find that I have _not_ overlooked the view which
attributes the _De Imitatione_ to John Gerson, but have expressly referred
to it.
2. If Gerson _was_ the author, this will not prove that in quoting the
proverb in question, Piers Ploughman quoted from the _De Imitatione_, as
H. P. supposes. The dates which I gave will show this. The _Vision_ was
written about A.D. 1362, whereas, according to Du Pin, John Gerson was born
December 14, 1363, took a prominent part in the Council of Constance, 1414,
and died in 1429. Of the Latin writers of the fifteenth century, Mosheim
says:
"At their head we may justly place John Gerson, Chancellor of the
University of Paris, the most illustrious ornament that this age can
boast of, a man of great influence and authority, whom the Council of
Constance looked upon an its oracle, the lovers of liberty as their
patron, and whose memory is yet precious to such among the French
clergy as are at all zealous for the maintenance of their privileges
against papal despotism."--_Ecc. Hist._, cent. xv. ch. ii. sec. 24.
3. Gerson was not a Benedictine monk, but a Parisian curé, and Canon of
Notre Dame:
"He was made curate (_curé_, parson or rector) of St. John's, in Greve,
on the 29th of March, 1408, and {203} continued so to 1413, when in a
sedition raised by the partizans of the Duke of Burgundy, his house was
plundered by the mob, and he obliged to fly into the church of Notre
Dame, where he continued for some time concealed."--Du Pin, _History of
the Church_, cent. xv. ch. viii.