On his return from Basle in the spring of the following year Erasmus brought his manuscript with him, and left it under the care of the Chancellor of Prince Charles,[581] to be printed by Thierry Martins, the printer of Louvain, whilst he himself proceeded to England. Thus it was being printed while Erasmus was in England in August 1516, and while the manuscript of the second book of More’s ‘Utopia’ was still lying unpublished, waiting until More should find leisure to write the Introductory Book which he was intending to prefix to it.
The publication by Erasmus of the ‘Christian Prince’ so soon after the ‘Novum Instrumentum’ that the two came before the public together was not without its significance. It gave to the public expression of the views of Erasmus that wideness and completeness of range which More had given to his views by embracing both religious and political subjects in his as yet unpublished ‘Utopia.’
Christianity and the laws of nature.
By laying hold of the truth that the laws of nature and Christianity owe their origin to the same great Founder, More had adopted the one standpoint from which alone, in the long run, the Christian in an age of rapid progress can look calmly on the discoveries of science and philosophy without fears for his faith. He had trusted his bark to the current, because he was sure it must lead into the ocean of truth; while other men, for lack of that faith, were hugging the shore, mistaking forsooth, in their idle dreams, the shallow bay in which they had moored their craft for the fathomless ocean itself! This faith of More’s had been shared by Colet—nay, most probably More had caught it from him. It was Colet who had been the first of the little group of Oxford Reformers to proclaim that Christianity had nothing to fear from the ‘new learning,’—witness his school, and the tone and spirit of his Oxford lectures. Erasmus, too, had shared in this same faith. In his ‘Novum Instrumentum’ he had placed Christianity, so far as he was able, in its proper place—at the head of the advanced thought of the age.
But More had gone one step further. The man who believes that Christianity and the laws of nature were thus framed in perfect harmony by the same Founder must have faith in both. 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. And now, in the ‘Institutio Principis Christiani,’ Erasmus followed in the same track for the special benefit of Prince Charles, who, then sixteen years old, had succeeded, on the death of Ferdinand in the spring of 1516, to the crowns of Castile and Aragon, as well as to the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily and of the island of Sardinia.
‘The Prince,’ of Machiavelli.
Hugo Grotius.
The full significance of this joint action of the three friends will only be justly appreciated if it be taken into account that probably, at the very moment when Erasmus was writing his ‘Christian Prince’ and More his ‘Utopia,’ the as yet unpublished manuscript of ‘The Prince’ of Machiavelli was lying in the study of its author. The semi-pagan school of Italy was not only drifting into the denial of Christianity itself, but it had already cast aside the Christian standard of morals as one which would not work in practice at least in political affairs. The Machiavellian theory was already avowedly accepted and acted upon in international affairs by the Pope himself; and indeed, as I have said, it was not a theory invented by Machiavelli; what that great philosopher had achieved was rather the codification of the current practice and traditions of the age.[582] A revolution had to be wrought in public feeling before the Christian theory of politics could be established in place of the one then in the ascendant—a revolution to attempt which at that time might well have seemed like a forlorn hope. But placed as the Oxford Reformers were, so close to the ears of royalty, in a position which gave them some influence at least with Henry VIII., with Prince Charles, and with Leo X., it was their duty to do what they could. And possibly it may have been in some measure owing to their labours that a century later Hugo Grotius, the father of the modern international system, was able in the name of Europe to reject the Machiavellian theory as one that would not work, and to adopt in its place the Christian theory as the one which was sanctioned by the laws of nature, and upon which alone it was safe to found the polity of the civilised world.[583]
It may be worth while to notice also one other point which may be said to turn upon this perception of the relation of Christianity to the laws of nature.