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 criticalinterpretation could be found to be in perfect harmony with his evident love and reverence for the Scriptures.Theyattributed 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.
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 whohad 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]
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 hadno 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.
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!
I. ERASMUS COMES TO OXFORD (1498).
The character of Erasmus.
In the spring or summer of 1498, the foreign scholar—Erasmus of Rotterdam—arrived at Oxford, brought over to England by Lord Mountjoy from Paris.[181]Erasmus was an entire stranger in England; he did not know a word of English, but was at once most hospitably received into the College of St. Mary the Virgin, by the prior Richard Charnock. Colet hadindeed, as already mentioned, heard Erasmus spoken of at Paris as a learned scholar,[182]but as yet no work of his had risen into note, nor was even his name generally known. He was scarcely turned thirty—just the age of Colet;[183]but in his wasted sallow cheeks and sunken eyes were but few traces left of the physical vigour of early manhood. In place of the glow of health and strength, were lines which told that midnight oil, bad lodging, and the harassing life of a poor student, driven about and ill-served as he had been, had already broken what must have been at best a frail constitution. But the worn scabbard told of the sharpness and temper of the steel within. His was a mind restless for mental work, now fighting through the obstacles of ill-health and poverty, in pursuit of its natural bent, as it had once had to fight its way out of monastic thraldom to secure the freedom of action which such a mind required.
His object in coming to Oxford.
Though well schooled and stored with learning, yet he had not come to Oxford to teach, or to make a name by display of intellectual power, but simply to add new branches of knowledge to those already acquired. Greek was now to be learned there—thanks to the efforts of Grocyn and Linacre—and Erasmus had come to Oxford bent upon adding a knowledge of Greek to his Latin lore. To belong to that little knot of mennorth of the Alps who already knew Greek—whose number yet might be counted on his fingers—this had now become his immediate object of ambition. What he meant to do with his tools when he had got them, probably was a question to be decided by circumstances rather than by any very definite plan of his own. To gain his living by taking pupils, and to live the life of a scholar at some continental university, was probably the future floating indistinctly before him.
Erasmus is introduced to Colet.
Prior Charnock seems to have at once appreciated Erasmus. He did all in his power to give him a warm welcome to the university.[184]He seems to have taken him at once to hear Colet lecture;[185]and he very soon informed Colet that his new guest turned out to be no ordinary man.[186]Upon this report Colet wrote to Erasmus a graceful and gentlemanly letter,[187]giving him a hearty welcome to England and to Oxford, and professing his readiness to serve him.
Erasmus replied, warmly accepting Colet’s friendship, but at the same time telling him plainly that he would find in him a man of slender or rather of no fortune, with no ambition, but warm and open-hearted, simple, liberal, honest, but timid, and of few words. Beyond this he must expect nothing. But if Colet could love such a man—if he thought such a man worthy of his friendship—he might then count him as his own.[188]
Colet and Erasmus become warm friends.
Coletdidthink such a man worthy of his friendship,and from that moment Erasmus and he were the best of friends. The lord mayor’s son, born to wealth and all that wealth could command, whilst steeling his heart against the allurements of city and court life, eagerly received into his bosom-friendship the poor foreign scholar, whom fortune had used so hardly, whose orphaned youth had been embittered by the treachery of dishonest guardians, and who, robbed of his slender patrimony and cast adrift upon the world without resources, had hitherto scarcely been able to keep himself from want by giving lessons to private pupils. Whether he was likely to find in the foreign scholar the fulfilment of his yearnings after fellowship, it will be for further chapters of this history to disclose.
II. TABLE-TALK ON THE SACRIFICE OF CAIN AND ABEL (1498?).
Table-talk at Oxford.
It chanced that, after the delivery of a Latin sermon, the preacher—an accomplished divine—was a guest at the long table in one of the Oxford halls. Colet presided. The divine took the seat of honour to the left of Colet; Charnock, the hospitable prior, sat opposite; Erasmus next to the divine; and a lawyer opposite to him. Below them, on either side, a mixed and nameless group filled up the table. At first the tide of table-talk ebbed and flowed upon trivial subjects. The conversation turned at length upon the sacrifices of Cain and Abel—why the one was accepted and the other not.
Colet’s views upon sacrifice.The difference between Cain and Abel in themen, not in the offerings.
Colet—if we may judge from the earnest way in which, in his exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, he had urged the uselessness of outward sacrifices,unless accompanied by thatliving sacrificeof heart and mind which they were meant to typify—was not likely to advocate any view which should attribute the acceptance of the one offering and the rejection of the other, merely to any difference in the offerings themselves. He would be sure to place the difference in thecharacter of the men. Colet seems on this occasion to have done so, and to have fancied he saw in the different occupations chosen by the two brothers evidence of the different spirit under which they acted. The exact course of the conversation we have no means of following. All we know is, that Colet took one side, and Erasmus and the divine the other, and that the chief bone of contention was the suggestion thrown out by Colet, that Cain had in the first instance offended the Almighty by his distrust in the Divine beneficence, and too great confidence in his own art and industry, and that this was proved by his having been the first to attempt to till the cursed ground; while Abel, with greater resignation, and resting content with what nature still spontaneously yielded, had chosen the gentle occupation of a shepherd.[189]
There may have been something fanciful in the view urged by Colet, but it is evident that it covered a truth which he could not give up, however hard and long his opponents might argue.
Erasmus was astonished at Colet’s earnestness and power. He seemed to him ‘like one inspired. In hisvoice, his eye, his whole countenance and mien, he seemed raised, as it were, out of himself.’[190]
Erasmus makes up a story about Cain.
Erasmus and the divine both felt themselves beaten; but it is not always easy for the vanquished to yield gracefully, and the discussion, growing warmer as it proceeded, might have risen even to intemperate heat, had not Erasmus dexterously wound it round to a happy conclusion by pretending to remember that he had once met with a curious story about Cain in an old wormeaten manuscript whose title-page time had destroyed. The disputants were all attention, and Erasmus, having thus tickled their curiosity, was induced to tell the story, after extracting a promise from the listeners that they would not treat it as a fable. He then drew upon his ready wit, and improvised the following story:—
‘This Cain was a man of art and industry, and withal greedy and covetous. He had often heard from his parents how, in the garden from which they had been driven, the corn grew as tall as alder-bushes unchoked by tares, thorns, or thistles. When he brooded over these things, and saw how meagre a crop the ground produced, after all his pains in tilling it, he was tempted to resort to treachery. He went to the angel who was the appointed guardian of paradise, and, plying him with crafty arts, tempted him with promises to give him secretly just a few grains from the luxuriant crops of Eden. He argued that so small a theft could not be noticed, and that if it were, theangel could but fall to the condition men were in. Why was his condition better than theirs? Men were driven out of the garden because they had eaten the apple. He, being set to guard the gate, could enjoy neither paradise nor heaven. He was not even free, as they were, to wander where he liked upon earth! Many good things were still left to men. With care and labour the world might be cultivated, and human misery so far lessened by discoveries and arts of all kinds, that at length men might not need to be envious even of Eden. It was true that they were infested by diseases, but human art would find the cure for these in time. Perhaps some day something might even be found which would make life immortal. When man by his industry had made the earth into one great garden, the angel would be shut out from it, as well as from heaven and Eden. Let him do what he could for men without harm to himself, and then men would do what they could for him in return. The worst man will carry the weakest cause, if he be but the best talker. A few grains were obtained by stealth, and carefully sown by Cain. These being sprung up, produced an increased number. The multiplied seed was again sown, and the process repeated time after time. Before many harvests had passed the produce of the stolen seed covered a wide tract of country. When what was taking place on earth became too conspicuous to be longer concealed from heaven, God was exceedingly wroth. “I see,” He said, “how this fellow delights in toil and sweat; I will heap it upon him to his fill.” He spoke, and sent a dense army of ants and locusts to blight Cain’s cornfields. He added to these hailstorms and hurricanes. He sent another angel to guard the gateof paradise, and imprisoned the one who had favoured man in a human body. Cain tried to appease God by burnt-offerings of fruits, but found that the smoke of his sacrifice would not rise towards heaven. Understanding from this that the anger of God was determined against him,he despaired!’[191]
Thus, with this clever impromptu fable did Erasmus gracefully contrive to throw the weight of his altered opinion into Colet’s scale, and at the same time to restore the whole party to wonted good-humour. Meanwhile what he had seen of Colet made a deep impression upon him. He himself declared that he never had enjoyed an after-dinner talk so much. It was, he said, wanting in nothing.[192]
The position of Colet and Erasmus at Oxford.
This little glimpse given by Erasmus himself of his first experience of Oxford life is of value, not only as revealing his own early impressions of Colet and Oxford, but also as throwing some little light upon the position which Colet himself had taken in the University after a year’s labour at his post. That he should be chosen to preside at the long table on this occasion was a mark at least of honour and respect; while the way in whichheevidently gave the tone to the conversation, and became so thoroughly the central figure in the group, shows that this respect was true homage paid to character, and not to mere wealth and station. Then, again, the fact that Erasmus, a stranger, without purse or name, should have had assigned to him the second seat of honour, second only to the special guest of the day, was in itself a proof of the same hearty appreciation by Charnock and Colet of character, without regardto rank or station. Would it have been so everywhere? Had Erasmus been so treated at Paris?[193]
Erasmus delighted with Colet and Charnock.
No wonder that the letters of Erasmus, written during these his first months spent at Oxford, should bear witness to the delight with which he found himself received, all stranger as he was, into the midst of a group of warm-hearted friends, with whom, for the first time in his life, he found what it was to be athome. ‘I cannot tell you,’ he wrote to his friend Lord Mountjoy, ‘how delighted I am with your England. With two such friends as Colet and Charnock, I would not refuse to live even in Scythia!’[194]
III. CONVERSATION BETWEEN COLET AND ERASMUS ON THE SCHOOLMEN (1498 or 1499).
But although Erasmus had formed the closest friendship with Colet, and was learning more and more to understand and admire him, it was long before he was sufficiently one in heart and purpose to induce Colet to unburden to him his whole mind.
Scholastic skill of Erasmus.
He did so only by degrees. When he thought his friend really in earnest in any passing argument he would tell him fully what his own views were. But Colet hated the Schoolmen’s habit of arguing for argument’s sake, and felt that Erasmus was as yet not wholly weaned from it. It was a habit which had been fostered by the current practice of asserting wiredrawndistinctions and abstruse propositions for the mere display of logical skill; and Colet’s reverence for truth shrunk from this public vivisection of it merely to feed the pride of the dissector. It pained and disgusted him.
Erasmus had been educated at Paris in the ‘straitest sect’ of Scholastic theologians. He had there studied theology in the college of the Scotists, and been trained in that logical subtlety for which the school of Duns Scotus was distinguished.[195]
Colet dislikes the Scotists.
But he found Colet, instead of regarding the Scotists as wonderfully clever, declaring that ‘they seemed to him to be stupid and dull and anything but clever. For to cavil about different sentences and words, now to gnaw at this and now at that, and to dissect everything bit by bit, seemed to him to be the mark of a poor and barren mind.’[196]
But Colet had not quarrelled only with the logical method of the Schoolmen; he owed the scholastic philosophy itself a still deeper grudge.
What the system of the Schoolmen was.
The system of the Schoolmen professed to embrace the whole range of universal knowledge. It was not confined strictly to religion; it included, also, questions of philosophy and science. And these were settled by isolated texts from the Bible, or dicta of the earlier Schoolmen, and not by the investigation of facts. A theology so dogmatic and capricious could consistently admit of no progress. Every discovery of science or philosophy, contrary to the dicta of the Schoolmen, must be regarded as a crime. It was the logical result of an inherent vice in the system that Brunos andGalileos, in after ages, were tortured by successors of the Schoolmen into the denial of inconvenient truths.
The scholastic system not adapted to an age of progress and discovery.
This might do all very well in stagnant times, but in an age when the new art of printing was reviving ancient learning, and new worlds were turning up in hitherto untracked seas, men who, like Colet, entered into the spirit of the new era, soon found out that thesummæ theologiæof the Schoolmen were no sum of theology at all; that their science and philosophy were grossly deficient; and that if Christianity must in truth stand or fall with scholastic dogmas, then the accession of new light would be likely to lead honest enquirers after truth to reject it, and to accept in its place the refined semi-pagan philosophy which had accompanied the revival of learning in Italy. Yet these were the alternatives which the Schoolmen, in common with the champions of dogmatic creeds in all ages, tried to force upon mankind. Their cry was, as that of their scholastic successors has been, and is, ‘OurChristianity ornone.’
Colet’s faith in facts and free enquiry.Colet rests on the person of Christ and the ‘Apostles’ Creed.’
Colet had seen in Italy which of these two alternatives those who came within the influence of the new learning were inclined to take. But he had seen or heard, too, in Italy, of a third alternative. He had found a Christianity, not scholastic, not dogmatic, which did not seem to him to have anything to fear from free enquiry, for it was itself one of those facts which free enquiry had brought once more to light: the reproduction of its ancient records in their original languages was itself one of the results of the new learning. He had found in the New Testament a simple record of the facts of the life of Christ, and a few apostolic letters to the churches. It had brought him, not to an endlessweb of propositions to the acceptance of which he must school his mind, but to apersonwhom to love, in whom to trust, and for whom to work. He would not rest even in the teaching of his beloved St. Paul. He had been taught by the Apostle to look up from him to the ‘wonderful majesty of Christ;’[197]and loyalty to Christ had become the ruling passion of his life.[198]
Having rejected thesummæ theologiæof the Schoolmen, even before his faith had been shaken, by Grocyn’s discovery, in Dionysian speculations, his disappointment also in the latter would seem to have driven him back upon the Scriptures, upon the writings of St. Paul, above all upon Christ himself; until at last he had seemed to find in the simple facts of the Apostles’ Creed the true sum of Christian theology. Having entrenched his faith behind its simple bulwarks, he could look calmly out upon the world of philosophy and nature, with a mind free to accept truth wherever he might find it, without anxiety as to what the revival of ancient learning, or the discoveries of new-born science, might reveal, anxious chiefly to find out his own life’s work and duty, and right heartily to do it.
Colet’s advice to theological students to keep to the Bible and the Apostles’ Creed.Erasmus came to England disgusted with theology.Erasmus still a Schoolman.Erasmus praises Aquinas.Colet’s reply.
And having escaped the trammels of scholastic theology himself, he could urge others also to do the same. When, therefore, young theological students came to him in despair, on the point of throwing up theological study altogether, because of the vexed questions in which they found it involved, and dreading lest in these days, when everything was called in question, they might be found unorthodox, he waswont, it seems, to tell them ‘to keep firmly to the Bible and the Apostles’ Creed, and let divines, if they like, dispute about the rest.’[199]
But Erasmus as yet had far from attained the same standpoint.
He was himself in the very position above described. His experience in the Scotist college in Paris had not been lost upon him. It was not only that its filthy chambers and diet of rotten eggs[200]had ruined his constitution for life. He had contracted within its walls a disgust of all theological study. He describes himself as, previously to his visit to England, ‘abhorring the study of theology;’ and gives, as his double reason for it, the fear lest he might run foul of settled opinions; and lest, if he did so, he should be branded with the name of ‘heretic.’[201]
Disgusted, however, as he was with theology, all his theological training had hitherto been scholastic in itscharacter, and, apart from his disgust of theology in general, he does not seem as yet to have contracted any special disgust of scholastic theology in particular. He was still too much enamoured of the logic of the Schoolmen, and too often was found to take the Schoolmen’s side in his discussions with his friend.
Colet and Erasmus[202]had been conversing one day upon the character of the Schoolmen. Colet had expressed his sweeping disapprobation of the whole class. Erasmus, whose knowledge of their works was, as he afterwards acknowledged, by no means deep, at length ventured, in renewing the conversation at another time, to except Thomas Aquinas from the common herd, as worthy of praise, alleging in his favour that he seemed to have studied both the Scriptures and ancient literature—which doubtless he had. Colet made no reply. And when Erasmus pursued the subject still further, Colet again passed it off, feigning inattention. But when Erasmus, in the course of further conversation, again expressed the same opinion in favour of Aquinas, and spoke more strongly even than before, Colet turned his full eye upon him in order to learn whether he really were speaking in earnest; and concluding that it was so—‘What,’ he said passionately, ‘do you extol to me such a man as Aquinas? If he had not been very arrogant indeed, he would not surely so rashly and proudly have taken upon himself to defineallthings. And unless his spirit had been somewhat worldly, he would not surely have corrupted the whole teaching of Christ by mixing with it his profane philosophy.’[203]
Erasmus was taken aback, as he had been at the discussion at the public table. He had again been arguing without sufficient knowledge to justify his having any strong opinion at all. Which side he took on the question at issue was a matter almost of indifference to him. But he saw plainly that it was not so with Colet. His first allusion to Aquinas, Colet had resolutely shunned. When compelled to speak his opinion, his soul was moved to its depths, and had burst forth into this passionate reply. There must be something real and earnest at the bottom of Colet’s dislike for Aquinas, else he could not have spoken thus.
So Erasmus betakes himself to the more careful study of the great schoolman’s writings.
Erasmus studies Aquinas.
One may picture him taking down from the shelf the ‘Summa Theologiæ,’ and, as the first step toward the exploration of its contents, turning to the prologue. He reads:—
The ‘Summa.’
‘Seeing that the teacher of catholic truth should instruct not only those advanced in knowledge, but that it is a part of his duty to teachbeginners(according to the words of the Apostle to the Corinthians, “even as unto babes in Christ, I have fed you with milk and not with strong meat”), it is our purpose in this book to treat of those things which pertain to the Christian religion in a manner adapted to the instruction of beginners.
‘For we have considered that novices in this learning have been very much hindered in [the study of]works written by others; partly, indeed, on account of the multiplication of useless questions, articles and arguments, and partly [for other reasons]. To avoid these and other difficulties we shall endeavour, relying on Divine assistance, to treat of those things which belong to sacred learning, so far as the subject will admit, withbrevityand clearness.’
Scholastic ‘milk for babes.’
What could be better or truer than this? Erasmus might almost have fancied that Colet himself had written these words, so fully do they seem to fall in with his views. But turning from the prologue, nothing surely could open the eyes of Erasmus more thoroughly to the real nature of scholastic theology than a further glance at the body of the treatise. For what was he to think of a system of theology a ‘brief’ compendium of which covered no fewer than 1150 folio pages, each containing 2000 words! And what was he to think of the wisdom of that Christian doctor who prescribed this ‘Summa’ as ‘milk’ specially adapted for the sustenance of theological ‘babes’! To be told first to digest forty-three propositions concerning the nature of God, each of which embraced several distinct articles separately discussed and concluded in the eighty-three folios devoted to this branch of the subject; then fifteen similar propositions regarding the nature ofangels, embracing articles such as these:—
Whether an angel can be in more than one place at one and the same time?Whether more angels than one can be in one and the same place at the same time?Whether angels have local motion?And whether, if they have, they pass through intermediate space?[204]
Whether an angel can be in more than one place at one and the same time?
Whether more angels than one can be in one and the same place at the same time?
Whether angels have local motion?
And whether, if they have, they pass through intermediate space?[204]
—then ten propositions regardingthe Creation, consisting of an elaborate attempt to bring into harmony the work of the six days recorded in Genesis with mediæval notions of astronomy; then forty-five propositions respecting the nature ofmanbefore and after the Fall, the physical condition of the human body in Paradise, the mode by which it was preserved immortal by eating of the tree of life, the place where man was created before he was placed in Paradise, &c.; and then, having mastered the above subtle propositions, stated ‘briefly and clearly’ in 216 of the aforesaid folio pages, to be told for his consolation and encouragement that he had now masterednot quite one-fifthpart of this ‘first book’ for beginners in theological study, and that these propositions, and more than five times as many, were to be regarded by him as the settled doctrine of the Catholic Church!—what student could fail either to be crushed under the dead weight of such a creed, or to rise up, and, like Samson, bursting its green withes, discard and disown it altogether?
Erasmus goes over to Colet’s view.
No marvel that Erasmus was obliged to confess that, in the process of further study of the works of Aquinas, his former high opinion had been modified.[205]He could understand now how it was that Colet could hardly control his indignation at the thought, how the simple facts of Christianity had been corrupted by the admixture of the subtle philosophy of this ‘best of the Schoolmen.’
And yet we may well be free to own that Colet’s not unnatural hatred of the scholastic philosophy had blinded him in some degree to the personal merits of the early Schoolmen. Deeper knowledge of the history of their times, and study of the personal character at least of some of them, might have enabled him not only to temper his hatred, but even to recognise that they occupied in their day a standpoint not widely different altogether even from his own.
The merit of the early Schoolmen.
For as earnestly as Colet himself was now seeking to bring the Christianity and advanced thought ofhisage into harmony, the early Schoolmen had tried to do the same thing intheirs. The misfortune of the Schoolmen was, that they had inherited from St. Augustine, and the Pseudo-Dionysius, the vicious tendency to fill up blanks in theology by indulging in hypotheses, capable of receiving the sanction of ecclesiastical authority, and then to be treated as established, although altogether unverified by facts. They had also to harmonise the dogmatic theology so manufactured with a scientific system as dogmatic as itself. For while theologians had been indulging in hypotheses respecting ‘original sin,’ ‘absolute predestination,’ and ‘irresistible grace,’ natural philosophers had been indulging in similar hypotheses respecting the ‘crystalline spheres,’ ‘epicycloids,’ and ‘primum mobile.’[206]And seeing that the method by which the Schoolmen attempted to fuse thesetwodogmatic systems intoone, itself consisted of a still further indulgence in the same vicious mode of procedure, it was but natural that their attempt as a whole, however well meant, should leave ‘confusion worse confounded.’
The demerits of their successors.
Still it must not be forgotten that they did succeed by this vicious process in reconciling theology and science to the satisfaction of their own dogmatic age. This praise is, at least, their due. On the other hand, their successors in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries could not put forward any such claims for themselves.Theydid not succeed in harmonising the theology and the advanced thought oftheirage. They strained every nerve to keep them hopelessly apart. They blindly held on to a worn-out system inherited from their far worthier predecessors, and spent their strength in denouncing, in no measured terms, the scientific spirit and inductive method of the ‘new learning.’
Hence there can be little doubt that Colet’s hatred of what in his day was in truth a huge and bewildering mass of dreary and lifeless subtlety, was a just and righteous hatred. And though it took some time for Erasmus thoroughly to accept it, he could in after years, when Colet was no more, endorse, from the bottom of his heart, Colet’s advice to young theological students: ‘Keep to the Bible and the Apostles’ Creed; and let divines, if they like, dispute about the rest.’
IV. ERASMUS FALLS IN LOVE WITH THOMAS MORE (1498).
Amongst the broken gleams of light which fall, here and there only, upon the Oxford intercourse of Erasmus with Colet, there are one or two which reveal an already existing friendship with Thomas More, but unfortunately without disclosing how it had begun.
Introduction of More to Erasmus.
Erasmus, when passing through London on his way to Oxford, had probably been introduced by Lord Mountjoy to his brilliant young friend. It is even possible that there may be a foundation of fact in the story that they had met for the first time, unknown to each other, at the lord mayor’s table, or, as is more likely still, at the table of theex-lord mayor, Sir Henry Colet. Erasmus, having perhaps been told Colet’s saying, that there was but one genius in England, and that his name was Thomas More, may have been set opposite to him at table without knowing who he was. More in his turn may have been told of the logical subtlety of the great scholar newly arrived from the Scotist college in Paris, without having been personally introduced to him. If this were so, the rest of the story may easily be true. They are said to have got into argument during dinner, Erasmus, in Scotist fashion, ‘defending the worser part,’ till finding in his young opponent ‘a readier wit than ever he had before met withal,’ he broke forth into the exclamation, ‘Aut tu es Morus aut nullus;’ to which the ready tongue of More retorted—so runs the story, ‘Aut tu es Erasmus aut Diabolus.’[207]Whether at the lord mayor’s table, or elsewhere, theyhadbecome acquainted, and a correspondence had grown upbetween them, one letter of which, like a solitary waif, has been left stranded on the shore of the gulf which has swallowed the rest. It reads thus:—
Erasmus Thomæ Moro suo, S.D.‘I scarcely can get any letters, wherefore I have showered down curses on the head of this letter-carrier, by whose laziness or treachery I fancy it must be that I have been disappointed of the most eagerly expected letters of my dear More (Mori mei). For that you have failed on your part I neither want nor ought to suspect. Albeit, I expostulated with you most vehemently in my last letter. Nor am I afraid that you are at all offended by the liberty I took, for you are not ignorant of that Spartan method of fighting “usque ad cutem.” This, joking aside, I do entreat you, sweetest Thomas, that you will make amends with interest for the suffering occasioned me by the too long continued deprivation of yourself and your letters. I expect, in short, not a letter, but a huge bundle of letters, which would weigh down even an Egyptian porter,’··········‘Vale jucundissime More.[208]‘Oxoniæ: Natali Simonis et Judæ. 1499.’
Erasmus Thomæ Moro suo, S.D.
‘I scarcely can get any letters, wherefore I have showered down curses on the head of this letter-carrier, by whose laziness or treachery I fancy it must be that I have been disappointed of the most eagerly expected letters of my dear More (Mori mei). For that you have failed on your part I neither want nor ought to suspect. Albeit, I expostulated with you most vehemently in my last letter. Nor am I afraid that you are at all offended by the liberty I took, for you are not ignorant of that Spartan method of fighting “usque ad cutem.” This, joking aside, I do entreat you, sweetest Thomas, that you will make amends with interest for the suffering occasioned me by the too long continued deprivation of yourself and your letters. I expect, in short, not a letter, but a huge bundle of letters, which would weigh down even an Egyptian porter,’
··········
‘Vale jucundissime More.[208]
‘Oxoniæ: Natali Simonis et Judæ. 1499.’
Friendship between More and Erasmus.
Such being the friendship already existing between them, and beginning to show itself in the use of those endearing superlatives without which Erasmus, from the first to the last, never could write a letter to More, it is not surprising that, as winter came on, Erasmus should take the opportunity afforded by theapproaching vacation for a visit to London. Accordingly we get one chance glimpse of him there, writing a letter to one of his friends, and expressing his delight with everything he had met with in England.
Staying as he most likely was with Mountjoy or with More, enjoying the warmth of their friendship, and feeling himself at home in London as he had done in Oxford, but never had done before anywhere else, it was natural that the foreign scholar should paint, in the warmest colours, this land of friends. Especially of Mountjoy, who had brought him to England, and who found him the means of living at Oxford, he would naturally speak in the highest terms. Such was the politeness, the goodnature, and affectionateness of his noble patron, that he would willingly follow him, he said,ad inferos, if need be.