Frederic Seebohm

“ For a joyful life—that is, a life of pleasure—is either an evil—in which case, not only should you not help others to lead such a life, but, as far as you can, prevent them from leading it, as being hurtful and deadly; or, if it be a good thing, and if it be not only lawful, but a matter of duty to enable others to lead such a life—why should it not be good for yourself first of all, who ought not to be less careful of yourself than of others? For when nature teaches you to be kind to others, she does not bid you to be hard and severe to yourself in return. ”

“ And pacing up and down this [Pg 225] nave might be seen men of every class in life, from the merchant and the courtier down to the mendicant and the beggar. St. Paul’s Walk was like a ‘change, thronged by men of business and men of the world, congregated there to hear the news, or to drive their bargains; while in the long aisles kneeled the devotees of saints or Virgin, paying their devotions at shrines and altars, loaded with costly offerings and burning tapers; and in the chantries, priests in monotonous tones sang masses for departed souls.
Colet had now preached at St. Paul’s seven years. ”

“ Why should we thus narrow the Christian profession, when Christ wished it to be as broad as possible? [701] Except the big name, what is a state but one great monastery? Let no one despise another because his manner of life is different.... In every path of life let all strive to attain to the mind of Christ [scopum Christi] . Let us assist one another, neither envying those who surpass us, nor despising those who may lag behind. And if anyone should excel another, let him beware lest he be like the Pharisee in the Gospel, who recounted his good deeds to God ”

“ Without speaking rashly of the deeds of princes, one thing is clear, that there are some princes at least who first do what they like, and then try to find some pretext for their deeds. And in this hurlyburly of human affairs, in the confusion of so many leagues and treaties, who cannot make out a title to what he wants? Meanwhile these wars are not waged for the good of the people, but to settle the question, who shall call himself their prince.
‘We ought to remember that men, and especially Christian men, are free-men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But, until such a man should arise, the lamp of philosophy must burn alone in Florence. Men might come from far and near to listen to Marsilio Ficino—to share the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici, to study Plato and [Pg 14] Plotinus,—to learn how to harmonise Plato and Aristotle, to master the Greek language and philosophies,—to drink in the spirit of reviving learning—but, of true Christian religion, the lamp had not yet been lit at Florence, or if lit it was under a bushel. ”

“ To mortify myself to the world, I dash my hopes. I long for nothing more than to give myself rest, in which I might live wholly to God alone, weep away the sins of a careless life, devote myself to the study of the Holy Scriptures, either read somewhat or write. This I cannot do in a monastery or college. One could not be more delicate than I am; my health will bear neither vigils, nor fasts, nor any disturbance, even when at its best. Here, where I live in such luxury, I often fall ill; what should I do amid the labours of college life?
Cost of going to Italy. ”

“ At the same time, neither his letter to Servatius nor his reply to Dorpius had at all converted them to his way of thinking. Men perfectly self-satisfied, blindly believing in the sanctity of their own order, and arrogating to themselves a monopoly of orthodox learning, were in a state of mind, both intellectually and morally, beyond the reach of argument, however earnest and convincing. They still really did believe, through thick and thin, that the Latin of the Vulgate and the Schoolmen was the sacred language. They still did believe that Hebrew and Greek were the languages of heretics ”

“ Thomas-à-Becket when he lived was not very kind to the poor? The verger assents. ‘Nor can he have changed his mind on this point, I should think,’ continues Colet, ‘unless it be for the better?’ The verger nods a sign of approbation. Whereupon Colet submits the query whether the saint, having been so liberal to the poor when a poor man himself, would not now rather permit them to help themselves to some of his vast riches, in relief of their many necessities, than let them so often be tempted into sin by their need? ”

“ Believing Christianity to be true, they had faith that it would work. Deeply imbued with the spirit of Christianity as the true religion of the heart, they had demanded, not so much the reform of particular ecclesiastical abuses, as that the whole Church and the lives of Christians should be reanimated by the Christian spirit. Instead of contenting themselves with urging the correction of particular theological errors, and so tinkering the scholastic creed, they had sought to let in the light, and to draw men’s [Pg 507] attention from dogmas to the facts which lay at their root. ”

“ With a skill like that with which Homer published the praises of Achilles, Erasmus has studiously held up to the admiration of the world and of posterity the name of England, and especially of Colet, whom he has so described that there is not a good man of any nation who does not honour you. I seem to myself to see that each of you owes much to the other, but which of the two owes most to the other I am doubtful. ”

“ Whilst in all other branches of learning the human mind is straining its genius to master all subtleties, and toiling to overcome all difficulties, why is it that this one philosophy alone is not pursued with equal earnestness, at least by those who profess to be Christians? Platonists, Pythagoreans, and the disciples of all other philosophers, are well instructed and ready to fight for their sect. Why do not Christians with yet more abundant zeal espouse the cause of their Master and Prince? ”

“ The truth was that, in order to complete his knowledge of Greek, without which he had declared he could do nothing thoroughly, he had yet to undertake that journey to Italy which had been the dream of his early manhood, and the realisation of which six years ago had only been prevented by his unlucky accident at Dover. This journey to Italy lay between him and the great work of his life, and still the adage of Plautus remained inexorable, ‘Sine pennis volare haud facile est.’
It was therefore that he was translating Lucian. ”

“ For to have been in Italy while Colet was in Italy was to have come face to face with Rome at the time when the scandals of Alexander VI. and Cæsar Borgia were in everyone’s mouth; to have been brought into contact with the very worst scandals which had ever blackened the ecclesiastical system of Europe, at the very moment when they reached their culminating point. ”

“ And from reason they also deduced that, nature having bound men together by the ties of Society, and no one in particular being a special favourite of nature, men are bound, in the pursuit of pleasure, to regard the pleasures of others as well as their own—to act, in fact, in the spirit of the golden rule; which course of action, though it may involve some immediate sacrifice, they saw clearly never costs so much as it brings back, both in the interchange of mutual benefits, and in the mental pleasure of conferring kindnesses on others. ”

“ He retained as Dean of St. Paul’s the same simplicity of character and earnest devotion to his work for which he had been so conspicuous at Oxford. As he had not sought ecclesiastical preferment, so he was not puffed up by it. Instead of assuming the purple vestments which were customary, he still wore his plain black robe. The same simple woollen garment served him all the year round, save that in winter he had it lined with fur. The revenues of his deanery were sufficient to defray his ordinary household expenses, and left him his private income free. ”

“ Lust of the flesh.
‘As to the second worldly evil, which is the lust of the flesh—has not this vice, I ask, inundated the Church as with the flood of its lust, so that nothing is more carefully sought after, in these most troublous times, by the most part of priests, than that which ministers to sensual pleasure? They give themselves up to feasting and banqueting; spend themselves in vain babbling, take part in sports and plays, devote themselves to hunting and hawking; are drowned in the delights of this world; patronise those who cater for their pleasure. ”

“ You can fast by yourself, you can keep vigils by yourself, you can say prayers by yourself—and you can do these things by the devil! But, verily, Christian faith, which Christ Jesus truly said to be in spirit; Christian hope, which, despairing of its own merits, confides only in the mercy of God; Christian charity, which is not puffed up, is not made angry, does not seek its own glory,—none, indeed, can attain these except by the grace and gracious help of God alone. ”

“ To abridge what is said in the ‘Enchiridion’ on this subject into a few sentences, but retaining, as nearly as may be, the words of Erasmus, it is this:—
‘The good man is he whose body is a temple of the Holy Spirit; the bad man is like a whited sepulchre full of dead men’s bones. If the soul loathes its proper food, if it cannot see what is truth, if it cannot discern the Divine voice speaking in the inner ear; if, in fact, it has become senseless, it is dead. ”

“ You told us that there was no cause of war between Christians, who are bound together by holy ties in a love more than fraternal. And many other things of a like nature did you urge, with so great authority, that I may truly say that the virtue of Christ thus set forth by Colet was seen from afar. And thus did you discomfit the dark designs of your enemies. Men raging against the truth, you conquered with the mildness of an apostle. ”

“ Statues of wood and stone we decorate with gold and gems for the love of Christ. They only profess to give us the form of his body; these books present us with a living image of his most holy mind. [528] Were we to have seen Him [Pg 329] with our own eyes, we should not have had so intimate a knowledge as they give of Christ, speaking, healing, dying, rising again, as it were, in our own actual presence.’
Such was the earnest ‘Paraclesis’ [529] with which Erasmus introduced his Greek and Latin version of the books of the New Testament. ”

“ For they exhaust the mental powers by a dry and biting subtlety, without infusing any vigour or spirit into the mind. And, worst of all, theology, the queen of all science—so richly adorned by ancient eloquence—they strip of all her beauty by their incongruous, mean, and disgusting style. ”

“ Now it is obvious that at the foundation of the position here assumed by Erasmus, and elsewhere by the Oxford Reformers, lay the conviction that many points of doctrine were in their nature uncertain and unsettled—that many attempted definitions of doctrine, on such subjects as those involved in the Athanasian Creed, in the Augustinian system, and in scholastic additions to it, were, after all, and in spite of all the ecclesiastical authority in the world, just as unsettled and uncertain as ever; in fact, mere hypotheses, which in their nature never can be verified. ”

“ Strange places, too, for a fastidious student were the roadside inns of Germany, of which Erasmus has left so vivid a picture, and into which he turned his weary head each successive night, after grooming his own horse in the stable. One room serves for all comers, and in this one room, heated like a stove, some eighty or ninety guests have already stowed themselves—boots, baggage, dirt and all. ”

“ Erasmus in praise of Colet’s work.
‘What is this, I ask, but to act as a father to all your children and fellow-citizens? You rob yourself to make them rich; you strip yourself to clothe them. You wear yourself out with toil, that they may be quickened into life in Christ. In a word, you spend yourself away that you may gain them for Christ! ”

“ What Colet thought of the ‘Novum Instrumentum.’
‘What you say about the New Testament I can understand. The volumes of your new edition of it [the “Novum Instrumentum”] are here both eagerly bought and everywhere read. By many, your labours are received with approval and admiration. There are a few, also, who disapprove and carp at them, saying what was said in the letter of Martin Dorpius to you. But these are those divines whom you have described in your “Praise of Folly” and elsewhere, no less truly than wittily, as men whose praise is blame, and by whom it is an honour to be censured. ”

“ Again:—
‘The office of a prince is called a “dominion,” when in truth a prince has nothing else to do but to administer the affairs of the commonwealth.
‘The intermarriages between royal families, and the new leagues arising from them, are called “the bonds of Christian peace,” though almost all wars and all tumults of human affairs seem to rise out of them. When princes conspire together to oppress and exhaust a commonwealth, they call it a “just war.” When they themselves unite in this object, they call it “peace.” ”