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 apostolictraditions, 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.
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]
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]
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.
The Dionysian sacerdotal and ritualistic system is radically different from the Papal.The object of religion not to propitiate the Deity, but to change the heart of man.Cur Deus Homo?Colet on the ‘marvellous victory’ of a ‘suffering Christ.’
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.’
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.
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 thingand amystery.[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]
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 earlyGreek Fathers; and it has at least this merit, that it cannot be translated into the language of the heathen doctrine of propitiation.
Modern ‘priests’ acton behalf of manbefore 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]onbehalf of manbefore God, presenting men’s offerings to him. If Christ’s office, according to Dionysius, were emphatically toplead with men, to bringthemback, so the priest’s office was to act in his stead in the same work.
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 hespeaks 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]
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.
The Eucharist.Baptism.Sponsors.Priests have no power of loosing and binding.
It did not, like modern ritualism, tend towards the view that the Eucharist is asacrificein 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 symbolicprofessionof change of heart—as the ceremony in which the believer openly takes his soldier’s oath to Christ, and promises amendedlife.[143]It did not represent the sponsors as promising or professingin 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 andChristiantone 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.
Religion consists inlove.
Underneath, therefore, the wild excess of symbolism and speculation which lay on the surface, and formed, as it were, thefrothof 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, butlove. 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.
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]
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]
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 ofhimself does nothing, but God in him. But if he do attempt anything ofhimself, 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]
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 thatnot 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]
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 whichburnin Colet’s abstractfreezein the original. Whilst, therefore, acknowledging the influence of the Dionysian writings upon Colet’s mind, it must not be forgotten that thisinfluence 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.
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.
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 ofaccommodationand thehumanelement in Scripture. Again, in the doctrine that whilst, in this sense, theknowledgeof God is impossible to man, theloveof 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 throughoutDionysius, to find out in the sacerdotal and sacramental system a symbolic meaning, who does not recognise the attempt to find out arational intentionin its institution, which should make it believable in an age of reviving philosophy and science?
V. COLET LECTURES ON ‘I. CORINTHIANS’ (1497?).
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.
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; hisextreme consideration for others,[153]his modesty,[154]his tolerance, his wise tact and prudence,[155]his self-denial for others’ good.[156]
Colet studies the character of the Corinthians.Pride of the Greek nation.
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.
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, andseasons, 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]
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]
St. Paul’s modesty and tact.
Colet’s almost personal affection for St. Paulenabled 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.
Dionysius the Areopagite.
For he exclaims, ‘What if sometimes some men, endowed with secular wisdom such as Paul and hisdisciple, 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.
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 reasonthat 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 thoseheldfoolish 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]
Accommodation.
The striking characteristic of Colet’s letters to Radulphus was the stress laid upon the principle ofaccommodationon 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]
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.
Dionysian influence visible.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 ofProclus, 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.
Colet’s zeal for reform.
Whilst thus pointing out the evidence that Coletwas 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,oughtto 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]
Imitation of Christ.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 arelationship 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]
Colet’s love for St. Paul, but greater love for Christ.Colet’s 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 lovefor St. Paul, does he give vent to a still more tender love and reverence forChrist!
‘Here I stand amazed, and exclaim those words ofmy 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]
‘Here I stand amazed, and exclaim those words ofmy 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]