§ 71. HUMANISM IN ENGLAND. 651
vigorous appeal for clerical reform. ^ The text was taken from Rom. xii : 2. " Be ye not conformed to this world but be ye reformed." The pride and ambition of the clergy were set forth and their quest of preferment in Church and state condemned. Some frequented feasts and banquetings and gave themselves to sports and plays, to hunting and hawking.^ If priests themselves were good, the people in their turn would be good also. " Our goodness," exclaimed the preacher, " would urge them on in the right way far more efficaciously than all your suspensions and excommunications. They should live a good and holy life, be properly learned in the Scriptures and chiefly and above all be filled with the fear of God and the love of the heavenly life."
According to the canons of the age, the preacher went beyond the limits of prudence and Fitz-James, bishop of London, cited him for trial but the case was set aside by the archbishop. The charges were tKaF tJoIet had condemned the worship of images and declared that Peter was a poor man and enjoyed no episcopal revenues and that, in condemning the reading of sermons, Colet had meant to give a thrust to Fitz-James himself, who was addicted to that habit. Latimer, who was at Cambridge about that time, said in a sermon some years later, that " in those days Doctor Colet was in trouble and should have been burned, if God had not turned the king's heart to the contrary."
When Erasmus' Greek Testament_^£pearedj_Cole^_gayeJt ajiearty welcome. In a letter to the Dutch scholar acknowledging the receipt of a copy, he exjjressed his regret at not having a sufficient knowledge of Greek to read it and his desire to be his disciple in that tongue. It was here he made the prediction that "the name of Erasmus will never perish." Erasmus had written to Colet that he had dipped into Hebrew but gone no further, " frightened by the strangeness of the
1 The text in Lupton, Appendix C.
2 Lupton, p. 183, says Colet miglit aptly have referred to the case of the archdeacon who, in the course of his visitation, went to Bridlington Priory with 97 horses, 21 dogs and 3 hawks. For Colet's description in the Hierarchies of Dionysius of what a priest should be, see Lupton, p. 71 ; Seebohm, p. 76.
652 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
idiom and in view of the insufficiency of the liuman mind to master a multitude of subjects."^ A much younger scholar at Tubingen, Philip Melanchthon, had put his tribute to the Novum iristrumentum in Greek verse which was transmitted to Erasmus by Beatus Rhenanus. Fox, bishop of Winchester, pronounced the book more instructive to him than 10 commentaries.
Not long before his death, Colet determined to retire to a religious retreat at Shene, a resolution based upon his failing healtli and the troubles in which his freedom of utterance had involved him. He did not live to carry out his resolution. He was buried in St. Paul's. It is noteworthy that his will contained no benefactions to the Church or provision for masses for his soul. Erasmus paid the high tribute to his friend, while living, that England had not " aaothfil-fflore pious or one^ffibo more truly knew Christ." And, writing after Colet's death to a correspondent, he exclaimed, " What a man has England and what a friend I have lost!" Colet had often hearkened to Erasmus' appeals in times of stringency. ^ No description in the Colloquies has more interest for the Anglo-Saxon people than the description of the journey which the two friends made together to the shrines of Thomas a Becket and of Our Lady of Walsinghara. And the best part of the description is the doubting humor with which they passed criticism upon Peter's finger, the Virgin's milk, one of St. Thomas' shoes and other relics which were shown them.
Far as Colet went in demanding a reform of clerical habits, welcoming the revival of letters, condemning the old scholastic disputation and advocating the study of the Scriptures, it is quite probablejiejyoiild-n.oth.avjaia1]t>n in with the Reformation.'^ He was fifty when it broke out. The best word that can be spoken of him is, that he seems to have conformed closely to the demand which he made of Christian men to live good
1 Nichols, I. 376, 11. 287. At a later time, to take Mere's statement, Colet prosecuted the study, Nichols, II. 393.
^ Nichols, II. 25, 35 sqq., 72, 258, etc.
8 Gasquet : The Eoe of the, Reformation, p. 6, insists that the contrary view is "absolutely false and misleading."