The letter itself, too, apart from the story which it tells, may give some insight into his feelings during these months of solitary labour. It reads, I think, like the letter of a man deeply in earnest, engaged in what he feels to be a great work; whose sense of the greatness of the work suggests a natural and noble anxiety, that though he himself should not live to finish it, it may yet be carried forward by others; whose ambition it is to die working at his post, leaving behind him, at least, the first stones laid of a building which others greater than he may carry on to completion.
After telling the story of the priest’s visit, Colet writes thus:—
Colet to the Abbot of Winchcombe.
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‘Thus, Reverend Father, what he [the priest] wrote down at my dictation I have wished to detail to you, so that you too, so ardent in your love of all sacred wisdom, may see what we, sitting over the winter fire, noted offhand in our St. Paul.
Colet wants his friend to see why he admires St. Paul’s writings.
‘In the first chapter only of the Epistle to the Romans, we found all the following truths. [Here follows a long list.]... These we extracted, and noted, venerable father, as I said, offhand, in this one chapter only. Nor are these all we might have noted. For even in the very address one might discover that Christ was promised by the prophets, that Christ is both God and man, that Christ sanctifies men, that through Christ there is a resurrection, both of the soul and of the body. And besides these there are numberless others contained in this chapter, which anyone with lynx eyes could easily find and dig out, if he wished, for himself. Paul, of all others, seems to me to be a fathomless ocean of wisdom and piety. But these few, thus hastily picked out, were enough for our good priest, who wanted some thoughts struck off roundly, and fashioned like rings, from the gold of St. Paul. These, as you see, I have written out for you with my own hand, most worthy father, that your mind, in its golden goodness, might recognise, as from a specimen, how much gold lies treasured up in St. Paul.
‘I want the Warden also to read this over with you, for his cultivated taste and love of everything good is such that I think he will be very much pleased with whatever of good it may contain.
‘Farewell, most excellent and beloved father.
‘Yours, John Colet.’