V. COLET LECTURES ON ‘I. CORINTHIANS’ (1497?).

V. COLET LECTURES ON ‘I. CORINTHIANS’ (1497?).

[Sidenote: Colet’s lectures on Corinthians. MSS. at Cambridge.]

If the manuscript exposition of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians preserved at Cambridge, apparently in Colet’s own handwriting, with his own latest corrections,[152] may be taken as evidence of what his lectures on this epistle were, it may be of some value, apart from its own intrinsic interest, in enabling us to judge how far he adhered to the same leading views and method of exposition which he had before adopted, and how far, in preceding chapters, we have been able to judge rightly of what they were.

I think it will be found that this exposition of the Epistle to the Corinthians is in perfect harmony with all which had preceded it, and that it shows evident traces of those phases of thought through which Colet had been passing since his arrival at Oxford.

Its striking characteristic, like that on the ‘Romans,’ would seem to be the pains taken to regard it throughout as the letter of a living apostle to an actual church.

[Sidenote: Colet’s love for St. Paul.]

On the one hand, it teems with passages which show the depth of Colet’s almost personal affection for St. Paul, and the clearness with which he realised the special characteristics of St. Paul’s character; his extreme consideration for others,[153] his modesty,[154] his tolerance, his wise tact and prudence,[155] his self-denial for others’ good.[156]

[Sidenote: Colet studies the character of the Corinthians.]

On the other hand, no less conspicuous is the attempt on Colet’s part to realise the condition and peculiar character and circumstances of the Corinthians, to whom the apostle was writing, as the true key to the practical meaning of the epistle.

[Sidenote: Pride of the Greek nation.]

Thus Colet, in treating of the commencement of the epistle--an epistle intended to correct the conduct of the Corinthians in some practical points in which they had erred--stops to admire the wisdom of St. Paul’s method in speaking first of that part of their conduct which he could praise, before he proceeded to blame. And this he did, Colet thought, ‘that by this gentle and mild beginning he might draw them on to read the rest of his epistle, and lead them to listen more easily to what he had to blame in their conduct. For (Colet continues) had he at once at starting been rougher, and accused them more severely, he might indeed have driven away from himself and his exhortations minds as yet tender and inexperienced in religion, especially those of that Greek nation, so arrogant and proud, and prone to be disdainful.[157] Prudently, therefore, and cautiously had the matter to be handled, having due regard to persons, places, and seasons, in his observance of which Paul was surely the one most considerate of all men, who knew so well how to accommodate the means to the end, that while he sought nothing else but the glory of Jesus Christ upon earth, and the increase of faith and charity, this man with divine skill neither did nor omitted anything ever amongst any which should impede or retard these objects.’[158]

[Sidenote: Colet describes the state of the Corinthian Church.]

The same method receives a further illustration from the way in which Colet draws a picture of the condition of the Corinthian church, evidently feeling while he did so, how closely in some points it resembled the condition of the church in his own day. He surely must have had the Schoolmen in his mind, as he described some among the Corinthians, ‘derogating from the authority of the Apostles, and especially of St. Paul, whose name ought to have had the greatest weight amongst them, setting up institutions in the church according to their own fancy and in their own wisdom, making the people believe that they knew all about everything which pertained to the Christian religion, and that they could easily solve and give an opinion upon every point of doubt that might arise. So that, in this infant church, many things had come to be allowed which were abhorrent from the institutions of Paul, wherefrom had arisen divisions and factions, between which were constant contentions and altercations, so that all things were going wrong.’[159]

[Sidenote: St. Paul’s modesty and tact.]

Colet’s almost personal affection for St. Paul enabled him also to realise how, being the ‘first parent of the Corinthian church,’ he was ‘troubled’ at this state of things, not so much at their having tried to undermine his own authority, as at the danger they were in of making shipwreck of their faith, after all his pains in piloting their vessel. ‘Therefore, as far as he dared and could’ (writes Colet), ‘he upbraided those who wished to seem wise, and who conducted the affairs of the Christian republic more according to their own fancies than according to the will of God. Which, however, he did everywhere most modestly; the most pious man seeking rather the reformation of the evils than the blame of any.’ And therefore it was (Colet thought), that St. Paul in his whole epistle, and especially in the first part of it, strove to assert that men of themselves can know and do nothing, to eradicate the false foundation of trust in themselves, and to lead them to Christ, who alone is the wisdom of God and the power of God.[160]

And here again, after following St. Paul’s statement, that the wisdom of man being foolishness, God had chosen the foolish rather than the wise to hear him and to preach his gospel, Colet was led off into a train of thought which harmonises well with what has been stated in previous chapters, in that it shows how fully he had accepted the Dionysian writings as the genuine writings of St. Paul’s disciple, and how closely he associated in his mind the name of the disciple with that of the master.

[Sidenote: Dionysius the Areopagite.]

For he exclaims, ‘What if sometimes some men, endowed with secular wisdom such as Paul and his disciple, Dionysius the Areopagite, and a few others, were chosen both to receive the truths of his wisdom, and to teach them to others, these indeed in teaching others what they had learned from God, took the greatest pains to appear to know nothing according to this world, thinking it unworthy to mix up human reason with Divine revelations.... Hence Paul, in wise and learned Greece, was not afraid to seem in himself a fool and weak, and to profess that he knew nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified.’[161]

Then follows a passage in which Colet states, in his own language, what Paul meant when he preached ‘Christ crucified;’[162] a passage very similar to that already quoted from his abstract of Dionysius, and bearing the same marks of the modes of thought of a man who, as is affirmed of Colet, was more inclined to follow Dionysius, Origen, and Jerome, than St. Augustine.

[Sidenote: 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]

[Sidenote: 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]

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: Dionysian influence visible.]

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: 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]

[Sidenote: Imitation of Christ.]

[Sidenote: Character of Christ.]

Passing from this one example of Colet’s zeal for ecclesiastical reform, there remains only to be mentioned one other feature of this exposition of Colet’s which must not be overlooked; a feature which might seem to show that Colet was not wholly unacquainted with the writings of men of the school of Tauler and Thomas à Kempis, and which seems to connect itself with a remark of Colet’s, reported by Erasmus, that he had met on his travels with some German monks, amongst whom were still to be found traces of primitive religion.[170] I allude to the warmth with which Colet urges the necessity of following the perfect but not impossible[171] _example of Christ_, of Christians being bound in a relationship with Him, so close that their joint love for Christ shall form a bond of brotherhood between themselves more close than that of blood:[172] so that what is for the good of the brethren will become the test of what is lawful in Christian practice[173]--the earnestness with which he tried to realise the secret of that wonderful example, concluding that it lay in Christ’s keeping himself as retired as possible from the world--from the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life--and as close as possible to God--in his whole soul being dedicated to God.

‘He was,’ writes Colet, altogether ‘pious, kind, gentle, merciful, patient of evil, bearing injuries, in his own integrity shunning empty popular fame, forbidding both men and demons to publish his mighty power, in his goodness always doing good even to the evil, as his Father makes His sun to rise on the just and on the unjust.... His body He held altogether in obedience and service to his blessed mind ...; eating after long fasts, sleeping after long watching ...; caring nothing for what belongs to wealth and fortune. His eye was single, so that his whole body was full of light.... Such is the leader whom we have on the heavenly road ...; whom, without doubt, if we do not follow with our whole strength toward heaven, as far as we are able, we shall never get there!’[174]

[Sidenote: Colet’s love for St. Paul, but greater love for Christ.]

If Colet had risen out of Neo-Platonism to Dionysius and from Dionysius to St. Paul, it is evident that he did not rest even there. How in the following few words, overflowing as they do with his personal love for St. Paul, does he give vent to a still more tender love and reverence for _Christ_!

[Sidenote: Colet’s love for Christ.]

‘Here I stand amazed, and exclaim those words of _my Paul_, “Oh the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” O wisdom! wonderfully good to men and merciful, how justly thy loving-kindness can be called the “depth of riches”!--Thou who commending thy love towards us hast chosen to be so bountiful to us that Thou givest thyself for us, that we may return to Thee and to God. O holy, O kind, O beneficent wisdom! O voice, word, and truth of God in man! truth-speaking and truth-acting! who hast chosen to teach us humanly that we may know divinely; who hast chosen to be in man that we may be in God; who lastly hast chosen in man to be humbled even unto death--the death even of the cross--that we may be exalted even unto life, the life even of God.’[175]

[Sidenote: Contrast between Colet’s method and the Schoolmen’s.]

It may safely be concluded, that if Colet’s manuscript expositions preserved at Cambridge may be taken as evidence of the nature of his public lectures, they may well have excited all the interest which they seem to have done. Doctors of Divinity, coming to listen at first that they might find something definite to censure, might well indeed find something to learn. Amongst the students, probably, the seed found a soil in some degree prepared to receive it. But it must have required an effort on the part of the most candid and honest adherents of the traditional school to reach the standpoint from which alone Colet’s method of free critical interpretation could be found to be in perfect harmony with his evident love and reverence for the Scriptures. _They_ attributed an extent of Divine inspiration to the apostle which placed his words on a level in authority with those of the Saviour himself; while Colet, we are told (and some of the passages last quoted seem to confirm the statement), was wont to declare, ‘that when he turned from the Apostles to the wonderful majesty of Christ, their writings, much as he loved them, seemed to him to become poor, as it were, in comparison’ [with the words of their Lord].[176]

Yet they could hardly fail to see, whether they would or not, that while their own system left the Scriptures hidden in the background, Colet’s method brought them out into the light, and invested them with a sense of reality and sacredness which pressed them home at once to the heart.