Bishop John Colet

“ But Bishop Fitzjames, whose unabating zeal against [Pg 254] heretics had become the ruling passion of his old age, no longer able to control his hatred of the Dean, associated with himself two other bishops of like opinion and spirit in the ignoble work of making trouble for Colet. They resorted to their usual weapon—persecution. They exhibited to the Archbishop of Canterbury articles against Colet extracted from his sermons. Their first charge was that he had preached that images ought not to be worshipped. ”

“ My friend Sir John Walsh knew him and Dean Colet years ago, and he thinks it likely that the Bishop will give me a lodging in his house, and such help from books in his library as I may find needful for my task; and so he has commended me to Sir Harry Guildford to introduce me to the Bishop. What do you think of this plan?" he asked, seeing Miles looked serious.
"I would not tell all men what project you have in mind; my lord of London may be able to help a little, but he is cautious, and I think he would be afraid to help in anything that would put the Bible into the hands of the people." ”

“ Besides the preferments above mentioned, he was rector of the gild of Jesus at St Paul’s and chaplain to Henry VIII.
Colet, though never dreaming of a formal breach with the Roman Church, was a keen reformer, who disapproved of auricular confession, and of the celibacy of the clergy. Though no great scholar or writer, he was a powerful force in the England of his day, and helped materially to disintegrate the medieval conditions still obtaining, and to introduce the humanist movement. ”

“ Dean Colet was charged by the Archbishop with the duty of preaching this opening address.
It was a task by no means to be envied, but Colet was not the man to shirk a duty because it was unpleasant. He had accepted the deanery of St. Paul’s not simply to wear its dignities and enjoy its revenues, but to do its duties; and one of those duties, perhaps the one to which he had felt himself most clearly called, had been the duty of preaching. Probably, there was not a pulpit in England which offered so wide a sphere of influence to the preacher as that of St. Paul’s. ”

“ 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, [Pg 87] 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! ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Wherefore we ought to be firm and stable in our hope and joy, and, nothing doubting, trust in God through Jesus Christ, by whom alone men are reconciled to God.’—MS. fol. 5. After speaking of that grace which where sin had abounded did much more abound unto eternal life, Colet proceeds:—‘But here it is to be noted that this grace is nothing else than the love of God towards men—towards those, i.e. whom He wills to love, and, in loving, to inspire with His Holy Spirit; which itself is love and the love of God; which (as the Saviour said, according to St. John’s Gospel) blows where it lists. ”

“ 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 that [Pg 76] not a trace of sin may remain to prevent God from walking in the temple of our mind. ”

“ Humanism in England.―In England we meet with two men in the end of the 15th century, closely related to Erasmus, of supreme influence as humanists in urging the claims of reform within the Catholic church. John Colet in A.D. 1496 returned to England after a long sojourn in Italy, where he had obtained, not only humanistic culture, but also, through contact with Savonarola and Mirandola, a powerful religious impulse. He then began, at Oxford, his lectures on the Pauline epistles, in which he abandoned the scholastic method and returned to the study of Scripture and the Fathers. ”

“ Men, however, have in themselves a blind intellect, and a depraved will, and walk in darkness, not knowing what they do.... Those who by the warm rays of his divinity are so drawn that they keep close in communion with Him, are indeed they whom Paul speaks of as called and elected to His glory,’ &c.
For the Latin of these extracts see Appendix (A) .
In further proof that Colet’s views (like Savonarola’s) were not Augustinian upon the question of the ‘freedom of the will,’ may be cited the following words of Colet (see infra, chap, iv.) ”

“ 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. ”

“ Paul that God is pleased with living sacrifices and not dead ones, and does not ask for sacrifices in cattle, but in men. His will is that their beastly appetites should be slain and consumed by the fire of God’s Spirit [91] ...; that men should be converted from a proud trust in themselves to an [Pg 40] humble faith in God, and from self-love to the love of God. To bring this about, Colet thought was ‘the chief cause, yes the sole cause,’ of the coming of the Son of God upon earth in the flesh. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Paul's Church and hear the child-bishop sermon, and after be at the high mass, and each of them offer one penny to the child-bishop. When Dean Colet was asked why he had left his foundation in trust to laymen (the Mercers' Company) , as tenants of his father, rather than to an ecclesiastical foundation, he answered, "that there was no absolute certainty in human affairs, but, for his part, he found less corruption in such a body of citizens than in any other order or degree of mankind." ”

“ 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 openly taught, as Colet now for so many years had been teaching, that the true Christian’s religion, instead of consisting in the acceptance of scholastic dogmas, or the performance of outward rites and ceremonies, really consists in a true, self-sacrificing loyalty to Christ, his ever-living Prince ”

“ For as earnestly as Colet himself was now seeking to bring the Christianity and advanced thought of his age into harmony, the early Schoolmen had tried to do the same thing in theirs. 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. ”

“ Five years old is in many cases an age of a good deal of thought. The intelligence is free from the misapprehensions and misty perceptions of infancy; the first course of physical experiments is over, freedom of speech and motion have been attained, and yet there has not set in that burst of animal growth and spirits that often seems to swamp the deeper nature throughout boyhood. By this age Coley was able to read, and on his birthday he received from his father the Bible which was used at his consecration as Bishop twenty-seven years later. ”

“ As he will not shrink from accepting the results of science and philosophy, so he will not shrink, on the other hand, from carrying out Christianity into practice in every department of social and political life.
Accordingly More had fearlessly done this in his ‘Utopia.’ And this Colet also had done in his own practical way; preaching Christian politics to Henry VIII. and Wolsey, from his pulpit as occasion required, believing Christianity to be equally of force in the sphere of international policy as within the walls of a cloister. ”

“ It did not admit in any sacerdotal order, any power to remit or retain sin, to bind or to loose. On the contrary, [Pg 72] 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 and Christian tone about the Dionysian theory according to Colet’s rendering of it, strangely lacking in that of modern sacerdotalists. ”

“ 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 he [Pg 69] speaks 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. ”

“ The Petition of the Commons sounded like an echo of Colet's famous address to the Convocation. It attributed the growth of heresy not more to "frantic and seditious books published in the English tongue contrary to the very true Catholic and Christian faith" than to "the extreme and uncharitable behaviour of divers ordinaries." ”

“ Paul’s Cathedral. But having commenced his course by very strongly asserting its genuineness, and harshly condemning Laurentius Valla and others who [Pg 91] had 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. ”

“ 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. ”