On Friday, February 6, 1512, members of both Houses of Convocation assembled, it would seem, in St. Paul’s Cathedral, to listen to the sermon by which it was customary that their proceedings should be opened.
Colet appointed to preach the opening sermon.
Dean Colet was charged by the Archbishop with the duty of preaching this opening address.
It was a task by no means to be envied, but Colet was not the man to shirk a duty because it was unpleasant. He had accepted the deanery of St. Paul’s not simply to wear its dignities and enjoy its revenues, but to do its duties; and one of those duties, perhaps the one to which he had felt himself most clearly called, had been the duty of preaching. Probably, there was not a pulpit in England which offered so wide a sphere of influence to the preacher as that of St. Paul’s.
St. Paul’s Cathedral.
St. Paul’s Walk.
The noble cathedral itself was then, in a sense which can hardly be realised now, the centre of the metropolis of England. In architectural merits, in vastness, and in the beauty of its proportions, it was rivalled by few in the world; but it was not from these alone that it derived its importance. Under the shadow of its gracefully-tapering spire, 534 feet in height, its nave and choir and presbytery extended 700 feet in one long line of Gothic arches, broken only by the low screen between the nave and choir. And pacing up and down this nave might be seen men of every class in life, from the merchant and the courtier down to the mendicant and the beggar. St. Paul’s Walk was like a ‘change, thronged by men of business and men of the world, congregated there to hear the news, or to drive their bargains; while in the long aisles kneeled the devotees of saints or Virgin, paying their devotions at shrines and altars, loaded with costly offerings and burning tapers; and in the chantries, priests in monotonous tones sang masses for departed souls.
Colet had now preached at St. Paul’s seven years.
In this cathedral had Colet preached now for seven successive years. He had preached to the humblest classes in their own English tongue,[399] and, in order to bring down his teaching to their level, had given them an English translation of the Paternoster[400] for their use. He had seen them kneeling before the shrines, and had faithfully warned them against the worship of images.[401] He had preached to the merchants and citizens of London, and they had recognised in him a preacher who practised what he preached, whose life did not give the lie to what he taught; and he had done all this in spite of any talk his plain-speaking might create amongst the orthodox, and notwithstanding the open opposition of his bishop. If poor Lollards found in him an earnestness and simple faith they did not find elsewhere, he knew that it was not his fault. It was not he who was making heretics so fast, but the priests and bishops themselves, who were driving honest souls into heretical ways by the scandal of their worldly living, and the pride and dryness of their orthodox profession. And now, when he was called upon to preach to these very priests and bishops, was he to shrink from the task?
Colet had already, in his lectures at Oxford, given expression to the pain which ecclesiastical scandals had given him; and in his abstracts of the Dionysian treatises he had recorded, with grief and tears, his longings for ecclesiastical reform. These, however, had never been printed. They lay in manuscript in his own hands, and could easily be suppressed. It remained to be seen whether seven years’ enjoyment of his own preferment had closed his lips to the utterance of unpopular truths.
Condition of the clergy.