The Scottish Reformation / Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics

by Alexander F. Mitchell

It was while he was thus occupied that Alesius heard of the cruel edict of the Scottish bishops, and it hardly admits of doubt that he submitted to Melanchthon, and got corrected by him, his little treatise against their decree, forbidding the New Testament Scriptures to be used by the laity in the vernacular. It is a very pithy and forcible bit of pleading for the right of the Christian laity to possess and study the Scriptures in their own tongue. This remarkable treatise struck the true key-note in the contest it ushered in, and helped it on to victory—a victory which was substantially to be gained ere Knox had taken his place among the combatants on the side of the Reformation at all.[299]

To this epistle Cochlaeus replied without loss of time,[300] and ere the year was out Alesius rejoined in that Responsio ad Cochlei calumnias,[301] in which he has given so touching an account of his own maltreatment, so interesting a statement of his own opinions in matters of faith and church polity, and so trenchant a reply to the sophistries and slanders of his opponent.[302]

Cochlaeus.

This able and, for the age, singularly temperate reply made a deep impression in England as well as in Scotland, and doubtless prepared the way for that offer of employment there which two years subsequently was made him by Cranmer, whom, in his moderation and earnest desire to avoid a total rupture between the old church and the new life, he then so much resembled. But whatever its merits, the disputatious Cochlaeus—"der gewaffnete mann," as Luther sneeringly terms him—was determined that his opponent should not have the last word in the dispute, and accordingly in August 1534 he published at Leipsic his Apologia pro Scotiae Regno adversus personatum Alexandrum Alesium Scotum.[303] In this treatise he repeats the assertion in his previous one that Melanchthon, not Alesius, was the author of these epistles. He charges Alesius with putting lies into the mouth of a foreigner to the discredit of his native country, and tells him that if he had the power he would gladly send him away to Scotland with his hands tied behind his back to be ignominiously punished as a traitor and a public slanderer. His opponent's minute and temperate narrative of facts appears to have made no impression on him. He is content magisterially to pronounce it absurd and incredible, and inconsistent with itself as well as with probability. He appears in his ire to forget that the king of Scots and his subjects were better able to judge of its truthfulness than he, a foreigner, could be; and that after saying all he could for the bishops and superior clergy in his former reply, he had been obliged to conclude with the damaging admission that possibly there were "bishops and prelates who, neither in sanctity of life nor in acquaintance with sacred learning, responded to or satisfied their dignity and office."

The epistles of Cochlaeus, if abusive and less cogent in reasoning, as well as less relieved by any sparkle of wit or racy anecdote than those of Alesius, are certainly written in a more easy and flowing Latin style, and, in that respect at least, the Scottish prelates had no reason to be ashamed of the champion who had volunteered his services in their cause. Nor were they wanting in those more substantial expressions of their satisfaction which Cochlaeus, like most of the controversialists of his time, evidently coveted. The Archbishops of St Andrews and Glasgow testified their gratitude for his services by sending him liberal presents. The king wrote him a letter, a contemporary transcript of which is still extant, and also, as is stated by Cochlaeus Effect of his Treatises. himself in a letter to a Polish archbishop, sent him some more material tokens of his regard.[304] And even the messenger who had brought over the copies of his first epistle received, as it now appears, a present of fifty pounds Scots.[305] Alesius, though in quite another way, did not lack his reward, and it came in the way which he valued most—the treatises he had written, to a certain extent at least, got into circulation both in Scotland and in England. They cheered the hearts of the faithful under all the terrible trials to which they were subjected in the later years of James's reign, when he seems to have abandoned his former kindliness, and surrendered himself in a great measure to the priests and to vicious indulgences. They carried conviction to the minds of many, and gradually ripened opinion to demand the right to do publicly what many had learned to do secretly—to study the Word of God, and especially the New Testament, in their native tongue. This right was authorised by an Act of the Scottish Parliament passed in 1543,[306] when Cardinal Betoun was in disgrace, and the Archbishop of Glasgow was left alone to protest against it. This Act was the first real victory of the reformed party in Scotland, and it was mainly due to the able and temperate pleading of Alesius that this great boon, or indeed I may say this indefeasible right of Christian laymen, was granted. The same subject had been reverted to by him in his more elaborate treatise, De authoritate Verbi Dei, which was published in 1542 in Latin, and some time after was translated into English.[307]

Erasmus intervenes.

One other episode in this controversy remains still to be adverted to. This is the intervention of the great humanist, Erasmus,—an incident in his history on which his biographers with one consent have observed a judicious silence. Nevertheless, the fact is as undoubted as melancholy that he—who had done so much to promote the freer circulation and profounder study of the Greek original of the New Testament, and had even ventured, under the patronage of Pope Leo X., to bring out a Latin version of the New Testament more true to the original than the Vulgate version, that those who knew only Latin might understand more fully the meaning of the original—in his old age, when irritated by the course of events, and by his controversies with Luther, consented to recommend this scurrilous pamphleteer to his friends in Scotland. His own letter is not now extant, or, if extant, is not at present accessible; but the answer sent to him by the Scottish king has been preserved, like his letter to Cochlaeus, among the MSS. in the British Museum. It is sufficient to prove the fact that Erasmus did intervene, and commend to his Scottish friends a writer who represents Luther's translation of the New Testament, which more than any other book has made Germany what it is, as the "pabulum mortis, fomes peccati, velamen malitiae, praetextus falsae libertatis, inobedientiae praesidium, disciplinae corruptio, morum depravatio, concordiae dissipatio ... vitiorum scaturigo ... rebellionis incendium ... charitatis peremptio ... veritatis perduellio."

In 1535 Alesius, having received encouragement from the agents of the English king then negotiating an alliance with the Protestant princes of Germany, came over to England with a letter of recommendation from Melanchthon.[308] He was favourably received by Archbishop Cranmer, by Crumwell the Vicar-General, and by the king himself, who appointed him king's scholar, and instructed Crumwell, as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, to give him a place as a reader in divinity there.At Cambridge and London. He accordingly went into residence in Queen's College, the same college which shortly before had been the home of Erasmus while lecturing in the university on Greek, and towards the end of the year he began a course of lectures on the Hebrew Psalter. He is supposed to have been the first who delivered lectures in Cambridge on the Hebrew Scriptures, but he was not suffered to do it long in peace. It could not be concealed that he was a favourer of the new opinions and a friend of Melanchthon, and that he had, in fact, been recommended by him to the king and the chancellor of the university. By the time he had entered on the exposition of Psalm viii. he was challenged by one of the champions of the old learning to a public disputation, and courageously accepted the challenge; but when the day appointed for the discussion arrived, his opponent did not venture to meet him in open fight. He preferred to plot against him in secret, and to foment tumult among the scholars, till Alesius, finding that his life was in danger, and that he could not count on the protection of the university authorities, deemed it his duty to leave Cambridge and return to London.[309]

For the next three years he remained there, supporting himself chiefly by the practice of medicine, which he studied under a London physician of note. He occasionally, however, gave assistance to his reforming friends in the varying fortunes of these unquiet times. He did so notably in a convocation or a meeting of the superior clergy in 1536 or 1537,[310] being put forward by Cranmer and Crumwell as the chief spokesman on the reforming side, the opinions of which he defended with considerable force and ability, so far as the notes of the debates preserved by Foxe in his 'Acts and Monuments' enable us to judge.[311] His appearance on this occasion brought him into sharp collision with Stokesley, Bishop of London. On the other hand, it secured for him the warm friendship of Cranmer and Latimer, towards both of whom he continued to the last to cherish a deep affection, and of whose martyrdom he spoke with so much grief when he published his Commentary on the First Book of Psalms. While in England, as Thomasius tells us, he married an English lady, by name Catherine de Mayn; and when Henry VIII. once more veered round to his Returns to the Continent. former moorings, and passed the bloody statute of the six articles, insisting inter alia on the doctrine of Transubstantiation and the celibacy of the clergy, Alesius, like several other married priests, had to consult his safety and that of his family by a hurried retreat to the Continent.[312]