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History of the Reformation. Thomas M. Lindsay
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Автор произведения Thomas M. Lindsay
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We are told that the Lollards delighted in Colet's preaching; that they advised each other to go to hear him; and that attendance at the Dean's sermons was actually made a charge against them. Colet was no Lollard himself; indeed, he seems to have once sat among ecclesiastical judges who condemned Lollards to death;121 but the preacher who taught that tithes were voluntary offerings, who denounced the evil lives of the monks and the secular clergy; who hated war, and did not scruple to say so; whose sermons were full of simple Bible instruction, must have recalled many memories of the old Lollard doctrines. For Lollardy had never died out in England: it was active in Colet's days, leavening the country for the Reformation which was to come.
Nor should it be forgotten, in measuring the influence of Colet on the coming Reformation, that Latimer was a friend of his, that William Tyndale was one of his favourite pupils, and that he persuaded Erasmus to turn from purely classical studies to edit the New Testament and the early Christian Fathers.
§ 3. Erasmus.
Erasmus, as has often been said, was a “man by himself;” yet he may be regarded as representing one, and perhaps the most frequent, type of Christian Humanism. His character will always be matter of controversy; and his motives may, without unfairness, be represented in an unfavourable light—a “great scholar but a petty-minded man,” is a verdict for which there is abundant evidence. Such was the final judgment of his contemporaries, mainly because he refused to take a definite side in the age when the greatest controversy which has convulsed Western Europe since the downfall of the old Empire seemed to call on every man to range himself with one party or other. Our modern judgment must rest on a different basis. In calmer days, when the din of battle has almost died away, it is possible to recognise that to refuse to be a partisan may indicate greatness instead of littleness of soul, a keener vision, and a calmer courage. We cannot judge the man as hastily as his contemporaries did. Still there is evidence enough and to spare to back their verdict. Every biographer has admitted that it is hopeless to look for truth in his voluminous correspondence. His feelings, hopes, intentions, and actual circumstances are described to different correspondents at the same time in utterly different ways. He was always writing for effect, and often for effect of a rather sordid kind. He seldom gave a definite opinion on any important question without attempting to qualify it in such a manner that he might be able, if need arose, to deny that he had given it. No man knew better how to use “if” and “but” so as to shelter himself from all responsibility. He had the ingenuity of the cuttle-fish to conceal himself and his real opinions, and it was commonly used to protect his own skin. All this may be admitted; it can scarcely be denied.
Yet from his first visit to England (1498) down to his practical refusal of a Cardinal's Hat from Pope Adrian vi., on condition that he would reside at Rome and assist in fighting the Reformation, Erasmus had his own conception of what a reformation of Christianity really meant, and what share in it it was possible for him to take. It must be admitted that he held to this idea and kept to the path he had marked out for himself with a tenacity of purpose which did him honour. It was by no means always that of personal safety, still less the road to personal aggrandisement. It led him in the end where he had never expected to stand. It made him a man despised by both sides in the great controversy; it left him absolutely alone, friendless, and without influence. He frequently used very contemptible means to ward off attempts to make him diverge to the right or left; he abandoned many of his earlier principles, or so modified them that they were no longer recognisable. But he was always true to his own idea of a reformation and of his life-work as a reformer.
Erasmus was firmly convinced that Christianity was above all things something practical. It had to do with the ordinary life of mankind. It meant love, humility, purity, reverence—every virtue which the Saviour had made manifest in His life on earth. This early “Christian philosophy” had been buried out of sight under a Scholastic Theology full of sophistical subtleties, and had been lost in the mingled Judaism and Paganism of the popular religious life, with its weary ceremonies and barbarous usages. A true reformation, he believed, was the moral renovation of mankind, and the one need of the age was to return to that earlier purer religion based on a real inward reverence for and imitation of Christ. The man of letters, like himself, he conceived could play the part of a reformer, and that manfully, in two ways. He could try, by the use of wit and satire, to make contemptible the follies of the Schoolmen and the vulgar travesty of religion which was in vogue among the people. He could also bring before the eyes of all men that earlier and purer religion which was true Christianity. He could edit the New Testament, and enable men to read the very words which Jesus spoke and Paul preached, make them see the deeds of Jesus and hear the apostolic explanations of their meaning. He could say:
“Only be teachable, and you have already made much way in this (the Christian) Philosophy. It supplies a spirit for a teacher, imparted to none more readily than to the simple-minded. Other philosophies, by the very difficulty of their precepts, are removed out of the range of most minds. No age, no sex, no condition of life is excluded from this. The sun itself is not more common and open to all than the teaching of Christ. For I utterly dissent from those who are unwilling that the Sacred Scriptures should be read by the unlearned translated into their vulgar tongue, as though Christ had taught such subtleties that they can scarcely be understood even by a few theologians, or as though the strength of the Christian religion consisted in men's ignorance of it. The mysteries of kings it may be safer to conceal, but Christ wished His mysteries to be published as openly as possible. I wish that even the weakest woman should read the Gospel—should read the Epistles of Paul. And I wish these were translated into all languages, so that they might be read and understood, not only by Scots and Irishmen, but also by Turks and Saracens. To make them understood is surely the first step. It may be that they might be ridiculed by many, but some would take them to heart. I long that the husbandman should sing portions of them to himself as he follows the plough, that the weaver should hum them to the tune of his shuttle, that the traveller should beguile with their stories the tedium of his journey.”122
The scholar who became a reformer could further make plain, by editing and publishing the writings of the earlier Christian Fathers, what the oldest Christian Theology had been before the Schoolmen spoiled it.
The conception that a reformation of Christianity was mainly a renovation of morals, enabled the Christian Humanist to keep true to the Renaissance idea that the writers of classical antiquity were to be used to aid the work of ameliorating the lot of mankind. The Florentine circle spoke of the inspiration of Homer, of Plato, and of Cicero, and saw them labouring as our Lord had done to teach men how to live better lives. Pico and Reuchlin had gone further afield, and had found illuminating anticipations of Christianity, in this sense and in others, among the Hebrews, the Egyptians, and perhaps the Brahmins. Erasmus was too clear-sighted to be drawn into any alliance with Oriental mysticism or cabalistic speculations; but he insisted on the aid which would come from the Christian reformer making full use of the ethical teaching of the wise men of Greece and Rome in his attempt to produce a moral renovation in the lives of his fellows. Socrates and Cicero, each in his own day and within his own sphere, had striven for the same moral renovation that Christianity promised, and, in this sense at least, might be called Christians before Christ. So persuaded was Erasmus of their affinity with the true spirit of Christianity, that he declared that Cicero had as much right to a high place in heaven as many a Christian saint, and that when he thought of the Athenian martyr he could scarcely refrain from saying, Sancte Socrates, Ora pro nobis.
It must be remembered also that Erasmus had a genuine and noble horror of war, which was by no means the mere shrinking of a man whose nerves were always quivering. He preached peace