Chapter II (1)

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.’]