Grocyn discovers that the Pseudo-Dionysius was not the disciple of St. Paul.
Grocyn was so impressed with the genuineness and value of the ‘Celestial Hierarchy,’ that he consented to deliver a course of lectures upon it, about this time, in St. Paul’s Cathedral. But having commenced his course by very strongly asserting its genuineness, and harshly condemning Laurentius Valla and others who had started doubts, it chanced that when he had proceeded with his lectures for some weeks, he became himself convinced, by strong internal evidence, that the work was not written by a disciple of St. Paul; and being an honest man seeking for truth, and not arguing for argument’s sake, was obliged candidly to confess the unpleasant discovery to his audience.[177]
Effect of the discovery on Colet’s mind.
What effect this unexpected discovery of Grocyn’s had upon the mind of Colet we are not distinctly informed. Whether Grocyn was able to convince him of the truth of his mature judgment does not directly appear.[178] He had so earnestly embraced the Dionysian writings, and they had produced so profound an impression upon his mind, that it may readily be believed that he would be very unwilling to admit that they were spurious. Nor, perhaps, was it needful that he should do so. For, however clearly it might be proved that they were not written by the disciple of St. Paul, it did not therefore follow that they were merely a forgery. The Pseudo-Dionysius, whoever he was, must have been not the less a man of vast moral power and deep Christian feeling; and possibly he may have had no fraudulent intention in using the pseudonym of the Areopagite, if he did so. The conscience of the age in which he lived, so lax on the point of pious fraud, may possibly have sanctioned his doing so.
It has already been seen that, in accepting the Dionysian speculations, Colet did so because he believed Dionysius himself to have simply committed to writing what he had heard from the Apostles themselves, and because he felt bound to believe that he ‘took the greatest pains to appear to know nothing according to this world, thinking it unworthy to mix up human reason with divine revelations.’[179]
Supposing that Grocyn’s discovery had convinced Colet that the speculations of the Dionysian writings were not of apostolic origin—were, in fact, products of merely ‘human reason’ which the Pseudo-Dionysius had ‘mixed up’ with Scripture truth, as Augustine and the Schoolmen had mixed up with it their scholastic speculations, it is clear that he would be bound by the principle set forth in the above passage, to reject the Dionysian speculations as he had already rejected those of the Schoolmen.
Colet driven more than ever to the Bible.
He would be bound to treat the speculations of the Pseudo-Dionysius as of no more authority than those of St. Augustine or Origen, and the practical result would be likely to be, that he would be thrown back more completely than ever upon the Bible itself, and continue all the more earnestly to apply to its interpretation the sound, common-sense, historical methods which he had already applied so successfully to the exposition of the Epistles of St. Paul.
In the meantime it may be readily imagined that, to a man of such deep feeling and impulsive nature, as the occasional outbursts of burning zeal in his writings show Colet to have been, such a disappointment would leave a sore place to which he would not care often to recur in conversation with his friends.