Instead of following the current fashion of the day, and displaying analytical skill in dividing the many senses of the sacred text, Colet, it is clear, had but one object in view, and that object was to bring out the direct practical meaning which the apostle meant to convey to those to whom his epistles were addressed. To him they were the earnest words of a living man addressed to living men, and suited to their actual needs. He loved those words because he had learned to love the apostle—the man—who had written them, and had caught somewhat of his spirit. He loved to trace in the epistles the marks of St. Paul’s own character. He would at one time point out, in his abruptly suspended words, that ‘vehemence of speaking’ which did not give him time to perfect his sentences.[80] At another time he would stop to admire the rare prudence and tact with which he would temper his speech and balance his words to meet the needs of the different classes by whom his epistle would be read.[81] And again he would compare the eager expectations expressed in the Epistle to the Romans of so soon visiting Rome and Spain, with the far different realities of the apostle’s after life; recalling to mind the circumstances of his long imprisonment at Cæsarea, and his arrival at last in Rome, four years after writing his epistle, to remain a prisoner two years longer in the Imperial city before he could carry out his intention of visiting Spain.[82] He loved to tell how, notwithstanding these cherished plans for the future, the apostle, being a man of great courage, was prepared, ‘by his faith, and love of Christ,’[83] to bear his disappointment, and to reply to the prophecy of Agabus, that he was ready, not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of his Master, if need be, instead of fulfilling the plans he had laid out for himself.
Circumstances of the Roman Christians.
And whilst investing the epistles with so personal an interest, by thus bringing out their connection with St. Paul’s character and history, Colet sought also to throw a sense of reality and life into their teaching, by showing how specially adapted they were to the circumstances of those to whom they were addressed. When, for instance, he was expounding the thirteenth chapter of the Epistle, he would take down his Suetonius in order to ascertain the state of society at Rome and the special circumstances which made it needful for St. Paul so strongly to urge Roman Christians ‘to be obedient to the higher powers, and to pay tribute also.’[84]
Colet tries to look at all sides of a doctrine.
Question of free will.
It is very evident, too, how careful he was not to give a one-sided view of the apostle’s doctrine—what pains he took to realise his actual meaning, not merely in one text and another, but in the drift of the whole epistle; now ascertaining the meaning of a passage by its place in the apostle’s argument;[85] now comparing the expressions used by St. Paul with those used by St. John, in order to trace the practical harmony between the Johannine and Pauline view of a truth, which, if regarded on one side only, might be easily distorted and misunderstood. In expounding the Epistle to the Romans it was impossible to avoid allusion to the great question afterwards forced into so unhappy a prominence by the Wittemberg and Geneva Reformers, as it had already been by Wiclif and Huss—the question of the freedom of the Will. Upon this question Colet showed an evident anxiety not to fall into one extreme whilst avoiding the other. His view seems to have been that the soul which is melted and won over to God by the power of love is won over willingly, and yet through no merit of its own. Probably his views upon this point would be described as ‘mystic.’ Certainly they were not Augustinian.[86] In concluding a long digression upon this endless and perplexing question, Colet apologises for the length to which he had wandered from St. Paul, and excuses himself on the ground that ‘his zeal and affection towards men’—his desire ‘to confirm the weak and wavering’—had got the better of his ‘fear of wearying the reader.’[87]
Connected with this habit of trying to look at all sides of a doctrine, there is, I think, visible throughout, an earnest attempt to regard it in its practical connection with human life and conduct rather than to rest in its logical completeness.
Colet dwells on the practical aspects of St. Paul’s doctrines.
Quotes Marsilio Ficino, and Aristeas.
If he quotes from the Neo-Platonic philosophers of Florence (and almost the only quotation of any length contained in this manuscript is from the Theologia Platonica of Marsilio Ficino[88]), it is, not to follow them into the mazes of Neo-Platonic speculation, but to enforce the practical point, that whilst, here upon earth, the knowledge of God is impossible to man, the love of God is not so; and that by how much it is worse to hate God than to be ignorant of Him, by so much is it better to love Him than to know Him.
And never does he speak more warmly and earnestly than when after having urged with St. Paul, that ‘rites and ceremonies neither purify the spirit nor justify the man,’[89] and having quoted from Aristeas to show how, on Jewish feast days, seventy priests were occupied in slaying and sacrificing thousands of cattle, deluging the temple with blood, thinking it well pleasing to God, he points out how St. Paul covertly condemned these outward sacrifices, as Isaiah had done before him, by insisting upon that living sacrifice of men’s hearts and lives which they were meant to typify.[90] He urges with St. 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 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.[92]
Colet points out the need of ecclesiastical reform.