His independent search for truth.
Lastly in his freedom from the prevailing vice of the patristic interpreters—their love of allegorising Scripture—and in his fearless application of the critical methods of the New learning to the Scriptures themselves, in order to draw out their literal sense, there is striking confirmation of the further statement that, whilst in Italy, he had ‘devoted himself wholly’[99] to their study. Colet’s object obviously had been to study St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans for himself, and his whole exposition confirms the truth of his own declaration in its last sentence, that ‘he had tried to the best of his power, with the aid of Divine grace, to bring out St. Paul’s true meaning.’ ‘Whether indeed’ (he adds modestly) ‘I have done this I hardly can tell, but the greatest desire to do so I have had.’[100]
II. VISIT FROM A PRIEST DURING THE WINTER VACATION (1496-7?).
Conversation on the richness of St. Paul’s writings.
Colet, one night during the winter vacation, was alone in his chambers. A priest knocked at the door. He was soon recognised by Colet as a diligent attender of his lectures. They drew their chairs to the hearth, and talked about this thing and that over the winter fire, in the way men do when they have something to say, and yet have not courage to come at once to the point. At length the priest pulled from his bosom a little book. Colet, amused at the manner of his guest, smilingly quoted the words, ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’ The priest explained that the little book contained the Epistles of St. Paul, carefully transcribed by his own hand. It was indeed a treasure, for of all the writings that had ever been written, he most loved and admired those of St. Paul; and he added, in a politely flattering tone, that it was Colet’s lectures during the recent term, which had chiefly excited in him this affection for the apostle. Colet turned a searching eye upon his guest, and finding that he was truly in earnest, replied with warmth, ‘Then, brother, I love you for loving St. Paul, for I, too, dearly love and admire him.’ In the course of conversation, which now turned upon the object which the priest had at heart, Colet happened to remark how pregnant with both matter and thought were the Epistles of St. Paul, so that almost every word might be made the subject of a discourse. This was just what Colet’s guest wanted. Comparing Colet’s lectures with those of the scholastic divines, who, as we have heard, were accustomed ‘out of an antitheme of half an inch to draw a thread of nine days long’ upon some useless topic, he may well have been struck with the richness of the vein of ore which Colet had been working, and he had come that he might gather some hints as to his method of study. ‘Then,’ said he, stirred up by this remark of Colet’s, ‘I ask you now, as we sit here at our ease, to extract and bring to light from this hidden treasure, which you say is so rich, some of these truths, so that I may gain from this our talk whilst sitting together something to store up in the memory, and at the same time catch some hints as to how, following your example, I may seize hold of the main points in the epistles when I read St. Paul by myself.’
Romans i. taken as an example.
‘My good friend,’ replied Colet, ‘I will do as you wish. Open your book, and we will see how many and what golden truths we can gather from the first chapter only of the Epistle to the Romans.’
‘But,’ added the priest, ‘lest my memory should fail me, I should like to write them down as you say them.’ Colet assented, and thereupon dictated to his guest a string of the most important points which struck him as he read through the chapter. They were, as Colet said, only like detached rings, carelessly cut from the golden ore of St. Paul, as they sat over the winter fire, but they would serve as examples of what might be gathered from a single chapter of the apostle’s writings.
The priest departed, fully satisfied with the result of his visit; and from the evident pleasure with which Colet told this story in a letter to Kidderminster, Abbot of Winchcombe,[101] we may learn how his own spirits were cheered by the proof it gave, that he had not laboured altogether in vain.
Letter to an Abbot.