The election of men by God not capricious.
Nor did Colet in this exposition show himself to be any more inclined to follow Augustine upon the question of election than he showed himself in his exposition of ‘the Romans.’ He is indeed ready enough to admit, that men never could of themselves rise out of the darkness of worldly wisdom to ‘accept the wonderful miracle of Christ,’—‘such is the miserable and lost condition of men;’ and yet he does not fall into the pitfall of Augustine’s doctrine, that men were chosen wholly without reference to their own characters. ‘It would seem,’ he said, ‘that it was not without reason that God chose, out of the crowd of men grovelling in the darkness of worldly wisdom, those who had not fallen so far into the depths of this darkness, and so could more easily be touched by the divine light.... If God himself be nobility, wisdom, and power, who does not see that Peter, John, and James, and others like them, even before the truth of God had shone in the world, surpassed others in wisdom and strength, in proportion as they were free from their foolishness and impotence, so that no wonder if God chose those held foolish and impotent, since indeed they were really the most noble of all the world, most separate, and standing out farthest from the vileness of the world; so that just as that land which rises highest is touched by the rays of the rising sun most easily and most quickly, so in the same way it was of necessity that, at the rising of that light which lighteth every man coming into this world, it should first light up those who rose highest amongst men, and stood out, like mountains in the valleys of men.’[163]
Accommodation.
The striking characteristic of Colet’s letters to Radulphus was the stress laid upon the principle of accommodation on the part of the teacher to the limited capacities of the taught. This is another point which crops up again in the MS. on Corinthians. When Colet turned to the practical teaching of St. Paul to the Corinthians, he seems to have been struck with the fact, that the rules which St. Paul laid down with reference to marriage and the like, were to be explained upon this principle.[164]
Colet on marriage.
Carried away by the authority of the Dionysian writings, Colet seems not only to have held the doctrine of the celibacy of the clergy, but even to have regarded marriage as allowed to the laity only by way of concession to the weakness of the flesh. He had expressed this view in his MS. treatise on ‘the Sacraments,’ and he repeated it, under cover of St. Paul’s allusions to marriage in the Epistle to the Corinthians.
Dionysian influence visible.
The celestial spheres and hierarchy.
The influence of the Dionysian writings is indeed very frequently evident. Again and again the phraseology used by Colet betrays it, and sometimes a Dionysian turn of thought leads to a long digression. As might be expected, a notable example of this occurs when Colet treats of the chapters in the epistle with which the Dionysian theory of the celestial hierarchy was intimately connected; in which St. Paul speaks, on the one hand, of the church as one body with many members, and, on the other, of celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial, and their differing order of glory. It was probably about the time that Colet was lecturing on Corinthians that Linacre was translating the work of Proclus, a Neo-Platonist of the Alexandrian School, ‘De Spherâ;’ and Grocyn writing a preface to Linacre’s translation in the form of a letter to Aldus, the great printer at Venice, by whom it was afterwards published in 1499, in an edition of the ‘Astronomi veteres.’[165] Astronomy was one of the sciences which the revival of learning had brought into prominence.[166] At this very moment Copernicus was pursuing in Italy those studies which resulted in the overturning of the Ptolemaic system. That system, however, which had become inseparably interwoven with scholastic theology, was as yet in undisputed ascendancy. Its crystalline spheres had for generations been devoutly believed in by the Schoolmen, and classed by them among ‘things celestial;’ and as Luther stood in awe at their magic motions, as ‘no doubt done by some angel,’[167] so poor Colet was led, by Dionysian influence, to draw strange fanciful analogies between their ‘differing order of glory’ and that of the ‘celestial hierarchy.’[168] Thus it came to pass that his exposition of the Epistle to the Corinthians was even disfigured with diagrams to illustrate these fancied analogies.
Colet’s zeal for reform.
Whilst thus pointing out the evidence that Colet was led astray by his unsuspecting confidence in the genuineness of the Dionysian writings, into doubtful speculations of this kind, and notions upon even practical points, from which his own English common sense, if left to itself, might have protected him, it is but fair to point out also the evidence contained in this manuscript, of that zeal for ecclesiastical reform which the purity of the Dionysian ideal of the priesthood at all events helped to inflame. There is one passage especially, in which he bursts out into an indignant rebuke of those ‘narrow and small minds’ who do not see that constant contention and litigation about secular matters on the part of the clergy ‘is a scandal to the church.’ Their folly, he thinks, would be ridiculous, were it not rather to be wept over than laughed at, seeing that it so injures and almost destroys the church. ‘These lost fools (he continues) of which this our age is full, amongst whom there are some who, to say the least, ought not to be clergymen at all, but who nevertheless are regarded as bishops in the church—these lost fools, I say, utterly ignorant of gospel and apostolic doctrine, ignorant of Divine justice, ignorant of Christian truth, are wont to say, that the cause of God, the rights of the church, the patrimony of Christ, the possessions of priests, ought to be defended by them, and that it would be a sin to neglect to defend them. O narrowness, O blindness of these men!... with eyes duller than fishes!’ Colet then points out how the church is brought into disrepute with the laity by their worldly proceedings; whereas, if the clergy lived in the love of God and their neighbour, how soon would their ‘true piety, religion, charity, goodness towards men, simplicity, patience, tolerance of evil ... conquer evil with good! How would it stir up the minds of men everywhere to think well of the church of Christ! How would they favour it, love it, be good and liberal towards it, heap gift upon gift upon it, when they saw in the clergy no avarice, no abuse of their liberality!’... Finally, after saying that to a priesthood seeking first the promotion and extension of the kingdom of God upon earth, neither asking nor expecting anything, all things would have been added; and asking with what face those, who differ from the laity only in dress and external appearance, can demand much from the laity, Colet exclaims, ‘Good God! how should we be ashamed of this descent into the world, if we were mindful of the love of God towards us, of the example of Christ, of the dignity of the Christian religion, of our name and profession.’[169]