Speaking of the anointing after baptism of the soldier of Christ, Colet says:—‘You must strive that you may conquer; you must conquer that you maybe crowned. Fight in Him who fights in you and prevails—even Jesus Christ, who has declared war against death, and fights in all.... It is the rule of combat that we should imitate our leader.... We have no enemies except sin (which is ever against us), and the evil spirits that tempt to sin. When these are vanquished in ourselves, then let us, armed with the armour of God, in charity succour others, even though they be not for suffering us, even though in their folly they see not their bondage, even though they would put their deliverers to death. So to love man as to die in caring for his salvation is most blessed.’[149]
Colet on the Pope.
These passages may also be taken as evidence how fully Colet had caught hold of the spirit, not merely of the froth, of the Dionysian doctrine; how he had approached it in earnest search after practical religion, and not merely in the love of speculation. They will also do much to explain how, drinking deeply at this well of mystic religion, he came back from Italy, not a mere Neo-Platonic philosopher or ‘humanist,’ but a practical Reformer. In Italy he had become acquainted with the scandals of Alexander VI. In his abstract of Dionysius, in speaking of ‘the highest Bishop whom we call “the Pope,”’ he bursts out into these indignant sentences:—‘If he be a lawful bishop, he of himself does nothing, but God in him. But if he do attempt anything of himself, he is then a breeder of poison. And if he also bring this to the birth, and carry into execution his own will, he is wickedly distilling poison to the destruction of the Church. This has now indeed been done for many years past, and has by this time so increased as to take powerful hold on all members of the Church; so that, unless that Mediator who alone can do so, who created and founded the church out of nothing for Himself (therefore does St. Paul often call it a “creature”)—unless, I say, the Mediator Jesus lay to his hand with all speed, our most disordered church cannot be far from death.... Men consult not God on what is to be done, by constant prayer, but take counsel with men, whereby they shake and overthrow everything. All (as we must own with grief, and as I write with both grief and tears) seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s, not heavenly things but earthly, what will bring them to death, not what will bring them to life eternal.’[150]
Colet on the wickedness of priests.
The following passage also burns with Colet’s zeal for ecclesiastical reform:—‘Here let every priest observe, by that sacrament of washing [before celebration of the eucharist], how clean, how scoured, how fresh he ought to be, who would handle the heavenly mysteries, and especially the sacrament of the Lord’s body; how such ought to be so washed and scoured and polished inwardly, as that not so much as a shadow be left in the mind whereby the incoming light may be in any wise obscured, and that not a trace of sin may remain to prevent God from walking in the temple of our mind. Oh priests! Oh priesthood! Oh the detestable boldness of wicked men in this our generation! Oh the abominable impiety of those miserable priests, of whom this age of ours contains a great multitude, who fear not to rush from the bosom of some foul harlot into the temple of the Church, to the altar of Christ, to the mysteries of God! Abandoned creatures! on whom the vengeance of God will one day fall the heavier, the more shamelessly they have intruded themselves on the Divine office. O Jesu Christ, wash for us, not our feet only, but our hands and our head!’[151]
The zeal is Colet’s, not Dionysian.
In conclusion, I must remind the reader that it would not be fair to take this sketch of Colet’s abstract of the Dionysian treatises as in any sense an abstract of the treatises themselves. What I have tried to do is, to show in what Colet’s own mind was influenced by them. The passages I have quoted are not passages from Dionysius but from Colet. The radical conception is most often due to Dionysius; the passages themselves represent the effervescence produced by the Dionysian conceptions in Colet’s mind. The enthusiasm—the fire which they kindled there they would not have kindled in every one’s breast. The fire was indeed very much Colet’s own. I find passages which burn in Colet’s abstract freeze in the original. Whilst, therefore, acknowledging the influence of the Dionysian writings upon Colet’s mind, it must not be forgotten that this influence was exerted upon the mind of a man not only already acquainted with the writings of the modern Neo-Platonists and of the Greek Fathers, but also already devoted to the study of the Scriptures, and bent upon drawing out for himself from themselves their direct practical meaning.
Germs of true scientific thought in Dionysius.
The truth is, that just as in the Greek Fathers, with all their tendency to allegorise Scripture, there was combined a rational critical element which formed the germ of a sounder and more scientific method of Scriptural interpretation—a germ which fructified whenever it fell into a soil suited to its growth, whether in the fifth and sixth or in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries—so in the Pseudo-Dionysian philosophy, with all its unscientific tendency to revel in the wildest speculation, there were combined germs of true scientific thought, which in like manner were sure to fructify in such a mind as Colet’s.
The relativity of all knowledge.