[340] Knight, quoting from Antiq. Britan., speaks of his preaching a second sermon after his interview with Henry VIII., wherein, at the king’s request, he spoke in favour of the French war. Of this Erasmus says nothing.
[341] To these free views, most Protestant writers, following the authority of Fox and Knight, have added that Colet was opposed to the practice of Auricular Confession. This charge is, however, distinctly disproved in his life. Not only did he bear witness to the comfort and help he himself found in the practice, but in his “Institution of a Christian Man,” written for the use of his school, he expressly enjoins the frequent use of confession. ‘Use oft tymes confessyon,’ is one of his “Precepts of Lyvynge,” besides other directions for the reception of the Sacraments of Penance and Houslynge, in sickness, and the hour of death. Colet’s strictures, however free, were in fact never directed against the doctrines of the Church, but only against popular practices of devotion. The idea of his having set himself against the use of one of the sacraments, so very welcome to those who would fain claim him as a precursor of the Reformation, has arisen from a gross misconstruction put upon a passage in one of the Epistles of Erasmus. That writer, speaking of his deceased friend, says, among other things, “Ut confessionem secretam vehementer probabat, negans se ulla ex re capere tantundem consolationis ac boni spiritus; ita anxiam ac subinde repetitam vehementer damnabat” (Eras. Jod. Jon. Ep. 577). Knight, in his Life of Colet (p. 68), paraphrases this sentence in the following extraordinary manner: “Though he approved of private confession, receiving himself a great deal of comfort and inward satisfaction from the use of it, yet he could not but condemn the popular custom of the frequent repetitions of what they called auricular confession.” The uninitiated Protestant reader is here given to understand that private confession was something quite distinct from what they called auricular confession, and that whilst Colet approved of the one, he vehemently condemned the other. The plain fact, of course, being that he approved, practised, and enjoined the right and proper use of the Sacrament of Penance, but condemned the indiscreet use which may be made of it by scrupulous and weak-headed penitents. And it is probable that most directors would be of the same opinion.
[342] Fox tells us that Colet sat with some others as judge on certain Lollards, who were burnt for heresy.
[343] In connection with the name of Ammonius, I cannot help noticing the ridiculous use which has been made of one of his familiar letters to Erasmus. A native of Lucca, he suffered much from the inclement English climate, and grumbles about it sadly, saying, moreover, that the burning of heretics has raised the price of wood. Erasmus replies in the same vein: “I am angry with the heretics for making wood so dear for us in this cold season.” The jest was rather a heartless one, yet it was but a jest; twenty-three heretics had been induced to recant, but no more than two had suffered in England up to this date of Henry’s reign: nevertheless, Knight, and some other writers, have made out from this passage the grave historic fact that such numbers were put to death at this time that all the wood in London was spent in burning them! The fact is, that Ammonius and Erasmus ceaselessly exercised their wits upon each other, and all their letters are couched in the same style of banter. Thus Erasmus professing to instruct his friend how to get on in England, says in the same merry strain: “First of all, my dear Ammonius, be impudent, thrust yourself into everybody’s business, elbow every one who stands in your way, give nothing to anybody without a prospect of getting something better, and always consult your own advantage.”
[344] This mystic number bore reference to the miraculous draught of fishes mentioned in St. John’s Gospel: ch. xxi. 11.
[345] Holte was usher at Magdalen school, and published his grammar in 1497, under the patronage of Cardinal Morton. Among the grammars enumerated by Erasmus, was one entitled “Mammotrectus” (or “a boy taught by his grandmother”), a name which, as we shall see, was sadly out of place in the academies of the sixteenth century. Before Lily’s time, says Wood, there were as many grammars as masters, and the rules of one were contradicted in another.
From Paul’s I went, to Eton sent,
To learn straightway the Latin phrase,
Where fifty-three stripes given to me