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INTRODUCTORY LECTURES

OXFORD REFORMERS
ilHoIet JEi^asttttts Attd More.

Delivei'ed in Philadelphia, in 1893, under the auspices of the
American Society for the Extension of
University Teaching.

W. HlJpSON SHAW, M.A.,
Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.

PHlLADBtPHIA :
The American Society for the Extension of UniversUV Teaching,
1893.
PRICE, FIFTY CENTS.

INTRODUCTORY LECTURES

OXFORD REFORMERS

Delivered in Philadelphia, in 1893, under the auspices of the
American Society for the Extension of
University Teaching.

W. HUDSON SHAW, M.A.,
Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.

PHII,ADEI<PHIA :
The American Society for the Extension of University Teaching,
1S93.

Copyright, 1893, by
The American Society for the Extension of University Teaching.

LECTURE I.

3olltt CfDoIet.

" A good man -was ther of religioun,
And was a poor Persoun of a toun ;
But riche he was of holy thought and werk.
He was also a lerned man^ a clerk
That Criites gospel gladly woide preche ;
His parischens devoutly woide he teche.
This noble ensample unto his scheep he gaf
That f erst he wroughte, and after that he taughte :
Out of the gospel he the wordes caughte^
And this figure he addid yit thereto.
That if gold 7-uste, what schude yren doo ?
A bettre freest I trowe ther nowher non is.
He wayteed after no pompe ne reverence,
Ne maked him a spiced conscience,
But Christes lore, and his Apostles twelve,
He taught, and f erst he folwed it himselve." — Chaucer's Prologue.
" The awakening of a rational Christianity, whether in Kngland or in the
Teutonic world at large, begins with the Florentine studies of John Colet.
From the first it was manifest that the revival of Letters would take a tone in
England very different from the tone it had taken in Italy., a tone less literary,
less largely human, but more moral, more religiotis, more practical in its
bearings both upon society and politics. The vigour and earnestness of Colet
were the best proof of the strength -with which the new morvement was to aff'ect
English religion . ... It was his resolve to fling aside the traditional dogmas
of his day and to discover a rational and practical religion in the Gospels
themselves, which gave its peculiar stamp to the theology of the Renascence.
His faith stood simply on a vivid realization of the person of Christ. In the
pro-minence which such a view gave to the 7noral life, in his free criticisTn of
the earlier Scriptures, in his tendency to simple forms of doctrine and con
fessions of faith, Colet struck the key-note of a mode of religious thought as
strongly in contrast with that of the later Reformation as with that of
Catholicism itself." — J. R. Green.

LECTURE 1.

AT the outset of these three lectures on the Oxford Reformers
of the early sixteenth century, it may be well, perhaps,
that I should indicate their scope and intention, and explain
why I think your time will not be altogether wasted in exam
ining the life-histories of such men as John Colet, Erasmus
and Sir Thomas More. It will be my fault surely, and not due to
the nature of the subject itself, if you do not recognize in the records
of these three lives one of the most interesting and stimulating
portions of English history. It is true enough that from the point
of view of those historians who care only for war and politics, for
the doings of kings and statesmen and diplomatists, these Oxford
scholars played a very unimportant part in the world, and are
scarcely worthy of notice. They never slew anybody, or gained
advantages over their foes by judicious lying, or stole territory
that did not belong to them. Moreover, if Professor Seeley is
right when he says that history is concerned only with the
development of States and has nothing to do with individuals
except in their capacity of members of a State, then certainly
Colet and Erasmus and More have no special claim upon the
attention of historical students. We had better inquire into more
important matters, such as the wars of Henry VIIL, in France, or
the iutricacies of Cardinal Wolsey's foreign policy. But those of '
us who have been unfortunate enough to receive our training in
Oxford, that antiquated and Old-world University, that home of lost
causes and exploded ideas, who acknowledge as our master in his
tory, John Eichard Green, and sympathize alike with the scorn
which he showered upon " drum-and-trumpet" theories of historical
writing, and his daring heretical attempt to set the figures of the

6 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
poet and the philosopher, the merchant and the missionary and
the discoverer, in places of equal honour with those occupied by
princes and warriors, cannot congent to see history narrowed down
to a mere branch of politics. It is very improper, no doubt,
but I feel certain that the majority of those here present, who
care for the study as it bears upon human lives and not as a
means of passing an examination or obtaining a degree, find
much more genuine interest in the history of ideas and great
movements than in the history of wars and treaties and faction
fights. You would rather solve the problems of the Renaissance
than know accurately all the intrigues and diplomatic schemings
of the eighteenth century. The Hundred Years' War of England
against France, and the exploits of tinsel heroes hke Edward III.
and the Black Prince have become inexpressibly wearisome to
you. Like Macaulay's criminal, who preferred the galleys for life
to the enforced reading of Guicciardini's History, you would
rather endure many woes than be condemned for long to the Wars
of the Roses. Wycliffe and More, Lord Bacon, Raleigh and
John Milton, the men of ideas, are more attractive to you than
innumerable brave and stupid fighting barons of feudal times.
If this be so, — if there seem to you greater utility in studying the
lives of thinkers and scholars who have powerfully influenced the
thought of their race, its religion and its morals, than in busying
yourselves perpetually about battles and sieges and the doings of
selfish conquerors and ravagers, — then these Reformers of four
centuries ago will possess for you a strong and powerful attrac
tiveness. For, in the first place, all three of them were good men as well
as great. One hears it said often enough that history is chiefly a
record of crimes and cruel deeds, of tyrannies and rebeUions, of
falseness and turpitude ; and that the more deeply read people
are in the life of the past the less belief they have in mankind.
Certainly if the moral sense has not been dulled by hard experience
of evil, if the conscience is still sensitive and delicate, there is
pain enough in human records. A life like Henry VIII.'s, or
Pope Alexander VI.'s, or Charles II.'s, a book like Machiavelli's
'Prince,' a self-revelation like the autobiography of Benvenuto

JOHN COLET. 7
Cellini or Rousseau, is a hideous nightmare to most of us, which
we would gladly forget if we could. We turn with a sense of
reUef to the biographies of men like these of whom I have to
speak, who, living in a corrupt and immoral time, in that transitional
epoch when the Middle Ages were dying and the New World
which we know had scarcely come into being, demand little of
that charity which historians find it necessary to accord to great
men of the past. Emphatically, whatever may have been their
faults, Colet and Erasmus and More were, for their generation,
the very salt of the earth. It has been claimed for John Colet,
who died before the Reformation had fully come to the birth
that he was the founder of that rational Christianity which the
Teutonic races have in the main accepted. He was also our
English Savonarola, scarcely inferior to the great Dominican in
courage and boldness, a preacher of righteousness who did not
flinch from denouncing the mad war-schemes of an ambitious
king or from exposing the worldliness and corruption of the order
to which he belonged, — in his own manner of Ufe pure and
blameless amid almost universal degradation. Erasmus was not
only the most brilUant man of letters of his age, the recognized
leader of the scholars of Europe, the Catholic who helped to
make possible the success of Luther by his merciless denunciations
of monks and clergy ; but he was also a man, who in spite of
some lamentable faiUngs, wins our admiration by his large-minded-
ness, by his single-hearted devotion to learning, his scorn of low
ambitions, his hatred of war and tyranny and cruelty, his genuine
piety and love of goodness. As for Sir Thomas More, it is
difficult to speak of him in words which will not seem to you
strained and exaggerated. Against him history has one charge
to bring and only one. For the rest, it seems 'to many of us that
his is absolutely the most perfect and lovable character in English
annals, King Alfred's not excepted. A man of vast intellect
and powers, yet of exquisite simplicity : a despiser of pomp
and luxury, yet devoted to culture and refinement : courted by
kings and princes, yet happy only in his home with his children :
the first thinker of modern times, who yearned with passionate
longing to ameliorate the lot of the toilers of the world:

8 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
More laid down his life at last cheerfiiUy, and in the spirit of a
hero and a martyr, for a cause which he judged to be just and
right, and which was in truth the cause of English liberty. He
was recognized then, and he is recognized now by all historians
who are not blinded by religious passion, as the noblest English
man of the sixteenth century.
Secondly, the study of those three Uves will bring you face to
face with that great intellectual movement of Italy which has
revolutionized human existence, — that Revival of Letters which
may rightly be regarded as the most important change in the
history of Europe which has occurred since' the fall ofthe Roman
Empire. We of Anglo-Saxon descent are naturally anxious to know
how the Renaissance affected our own race, what influence it had
upon the Reformation, in what ways it diifered from the Renaissance
in Italy. The answers to these questions can best be found in the
lives and works of the Oxford Reformers. Colet, Erasmus, and
More, with their friends Archbishop Warham, William Grocyn,
WilUam LiUy, and Thomas Linacre, were the first leaders of the
English Revival of Learning. Through their instrumentality,
Florence, the intellectual centre of Europe, the famous city which
has efiected for the modern world what Athens did for the
ancient, brought her inflaence to bear upon Oxford, and from
Oxford the new light was spread over the rest of England. But
in the hands of these scholars of Teutonic blood, the Renaissance
was strangely modified, and modified in a way that all Englishmen
have reason to be thankful for. Contact with ancient literature
made them rebels against mediaeval religion and thought, but not
against Christianity itself. They were untouched by the Paganism
of the Italian scholars. We cannot imagine John Colet listening
with pleasure, as Lorenzo de Medici did, to a satire upon immor
tality, or Erasmus refraining, Uke Cardinal Bembo, from reading
S. Paul's Epistles, lest their bad Greek should corrupt his style.
" The Revival of Letters in England," it has been well said, " took
a tone far difiereut from that which it had taken in Italy, less
literary, less largely human, but more moral, more religious, more
practical in its bearings both upon society and politics." Nothing
is more striking than the manner in which the healthy English

JOHN COLET. 9
conscience assimilated what was good in the Italian movement
and rejected the evil. Great as was the enthusiasm of the Oxford
scholars for the New Learning, they valued it chiefly as a means
to a noble end. Colet learnt Greek in order that he might cast
away the fetters of the schoolmen and find in the original docu
ments of Christianity a simpler and purer faith. Erasmus loved
culture with boundless enthusiasm, but he used all his learning and
scholarship to bring about reform ofthe Church and nobler views of
life. Sir Thomas More, Uke Machiavelli, wrote a treatise on govern
ment and politics, but his free thought produced not a libel upon
humanity and a picture of hopeless degradation, but a generous
vision of future progress and an exalted scheme of ethics. In fact,
the moral element in our English Revival was the predominant
one. Colet inveighs against corruption and selfishness in high
places. Erasmus lashes the laziness of monks and the tyranny
of kings. More dares to dream of a time when poverty and
misery shall have vanished from the earth, and obedience to the
laws of Christ shall have brought about a veritable kingdom of
God amongst men.
And thirdly, we have an additional source of interest in the fact
that we have to deal with the epoch of the Reformation, — of the
" Lutheran tragedy," as Erasmus called it. In that tragedy these
men played their parts. The Reformation saddened and gloomed
the last days of Erasmus and obscured his fame ; it brought More
to the scaflTold in the prime of life. In a certain sense they had
prepared the way for Luther, and were precursors of the Reforma
tion ; nor were the monks altogether wrong who complained that
Erasmus had laid the egg which Luther hatched. But the Oxford
Reformers were no Protestants. Their chief importance in history
is to be found in this, that they had given to the world an alterna
tive scheme for a reform of the Church by quiet, gradual methods,
without a revolution. They failed. Luther succeeded. He
destroyed the abuses and corruptions of the Church, but the price
paid was the sacrifice of the unity of Christendom, and from his
day to our own the interminable warfare of the sects has retarded
progress and brought shame upon Christianity. On the whole,
most of us in England and America, in spite of the great reaction

IO THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
in favour of Medisevalism which the last half century has witnessed,
in spite of the attitude taken up by a very considerable body of
our countrymen who repudiate with scorn the name of Protestant,
most of us think that Religious Liberty was worth any sacrifice of
unity. But we cannot help wondering sometimes, when we reflect
upon the hostilities which the Reformation has caused — the reUg
ious wars, the social strifes, the suicidal competition of sects, the
narrowness and the intense individualism to which Protestantism
is prone, the multipUcation of factions and discords, perpetuated
alike in life and in death between brother-men, between friends
and kinsmen — whether Goethe was right when he declared that it
would have been well for the world if Erasmus and not Luther
had guided the Reforming movement. Nay, furthermore, there
are not wanting wise teachers in our midst who warn us that there
is a Protestant scholasticism as well as a Catholic. If Luther, they
say, with his dogma of Justification by Faith, and Calvin with his
dogma of Predestination, have triumphed in the past, the future
belongs to Erasmus, who sought to diminish dogma, who insisted
on the final supremacy of Reason, and strove hard to draw man
kind from the discussioQ of insoluble mysteries to practical piety
and the imitation of Christ. Certainly if one may judge by the
present tone of theology — if, still more, we inquire into the beliefs
of average educated English laymen, we shall be forced to the
conclusion that the world is becoming, as it once was before,
Erasmian. In any case, a pathetic interest attaches to the vain
attempts of great and good men like More and Erasmus to preserve
the continuity of History, and to hand down to posterity, reformed
but not destroyed, the Church of Western Christendom.
There is not much difficulty in indicating the characteristics of
this trio of Reformers and their relations to each other. Colet is
primarily a preacher and theologian. Erasmus, once a monk,
is essentially a scholar and man of letters. More, by profession
a lawyer and a statesman, is the original thinker and daring
Speculator, with gifts of genius far exceeding those of his two
friends. We know least about Colet ; but it seems probable that
Erasmus derived much ofhis theology from him, and More many
of his ideas on politics and society. Colet, though born in the

JOHN COLET. II
same year as Erasmus, 1466, is acknowledged by him as his
master and teacher ; but the genius and intellectual power of
More seem to have altogether neutralized his twelve years of
inferiority in age. To mark the epoch it may be well to bear in
mind that when Colet was born, the Wars of the Roses were still
distracting England, and that when he died Luther was just about
to break with Rome. We have to deal with the age of the
Medici and the Borgias, of Richard III. and Henry VIII., of
Columbus and Savonarola, of Luther and Ignatius Loyola, of
Thomas Cromwell and MachiavelU — an age you will remember,
distinguished beyond most others by its portentous wickedness
and moral degradation.
John Colet was the son of Sir Henry Colet, a rich and prosper
ous mercer who became Lord Mayor of London in the year fol
lowing the battle of Bosworth. He was the first-born of a large
family of twenty-one sons and daughters, none of whom save him
self lived beyond childhood. He was educated at one of the few
famous schools which London then possessed, S. Anthony's,
where one may hope there was more instruction and less flogging
than was usual in fifteenth-century schools, which, if Erasmus
may be trusted, stood as much in need of reform as any institu
tions of Christendom. " At the present time," he writes in one of
his tracts, " all public instruction has passed into the hands of
schoolmasters. And though there ought to have been the greatest
care in appointing them, those assigned to the post are, as a rulei
a shabby, broken-down set of men, sometimes hardly in their
senses. So mean the place, so miserable the pittance, you would
say the pigs were being reared there, and not that respectable
people's children were being taught." History commemorates
Dean Colet's name if for nothing else, for this, that before he
died he had begun a revolution in middle-class education of which
the beneficial results have endured to our own day.
At the age of seventeen he was a student at Oxford ; and it is worth
our while perhaps to try to realize what the University was like
when Richard III. was king, in the last dying epoch of the Middle
Ages. Outwardly it was not at all the Oxford of to-day. John
Colet as he journeyed from London would pass over no beautiful

12 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
many-arched Magdalen bridge. That, of course, is a mere
creature of yesterday, barely a hundred and ten years old. He would
see Magdalen but without its tower, of which the first stone was not
laid until 1492, and without its groves, which date from the reign
of Elizabeth. Half of the colleges which are familiar to us were
then absent. Christ Church, the magnificent creation of Wolsey,
did not come into existence until 1525. There was no Corpus,
no Brasenose, no S. John's or Trinity, still less such modern
growths as Wadham and Worcester. But Colet would know
Merton and BalUol, the two oldest foundations ; and the vener
able University College, which is not so venerable, however, as
some persons would have us believe. He would see Queen's and
New College, Exeter, Oriel, Lincoln and All Souls. The Bod
leian Library as we know it belongs of course to a later centnry, but
the Divinity School, when Colet arrived in Oxford, was fresh from
the hands of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester's workmen ; and it is
a safe conjecture that he must often have listened there, probably
not without scorn and anger, to the disputations of scholastic
divines and the wordy warfare of Thomists and Scotists. The chief
feature, however, of mediaeval Oxford was the existence of numer
ous establishments belonging to the monastic orders. It was still
almost a city of monks and friars. The Benedictines had their
hostels on the site of Worcester ; the Dominicans had their home
in S. Ebbe's ; CarmeUties, Minorites, and Cistercians thronged the
streets ; S. Frideswide's nunnery had given place to a priory of
Augustinians, who also possessed a College for their student
canons near New Inn Lane, where Erasmus was hospitably
received when he first came to Oxford in 1498.
As to the life of the students, what most strikes us is their
poverty and the hardships of their lot. Oxford was not then the
exclusive possession of a small wealthy class. It was the home of
poor students, who lived on hard fare, in squalid tenements, need
ing constantly the attention of rat-catchers in their straw-littered
dormitories, forced from time to time to deposit in pawn in the
University chests some article of value in order to obtain a meal,
possessing few books and scanty furniture, finding almost their
sole means of recreation and athletic exercise in street brawls with

JOHN COLET. 13
townsmen, living chiefly by mendicancy. Mediaeval poems
constantly allude to the begging of undergraduates on their way
to the University, and late in the reign of Henry VIII. measures
were taken to keep the practice within bounds. " Be it enacted,"
says a statute of the realm, " that scholars of the Universities of
Oxford and Cambridge that go about begging, not being authorized
under the seal of the said Universities by the Chancellor or Vice-
Chancellor of the same, shall be punished as is before rehearsed of
sturdy beggars and vagabonds."
We need not, however, despise these mediaeval students. Their
poverty may perhaps raise in our minds certain inconvenient
doubts as to whether the endowments of the ancient Universities
have not been diverted in many cases from the classes for whom
they were originally intended and who stand most in need of
them. At any rate, we may be sure that the zeal for learning
displayed by those tattered gownsmen of the Middle Ages, who
often as not begged their food, was at least as great as that
displayed by their modern successors. Perhaps they cared for
knowledge more than we do. "In the chilly squalor of
uncarpeted aad unwarmed chambers," says a recent historian of
Oxford, the Warden of Merton, " by the Ught of narrow and
unglazed casements, or the gleam of flickering oil-lamps, poring
over dusky manuscripts hardly to be deciphered by modern
eyesight, men of humble birth, and dependent on charity for a
bare subsistence, but with a noble self-confidence transcending
that of Bacon and Newton, thought out and copied out those
subtle masterpieces of mediaeval lore, purporting to unveil the
hidden laws of Nature as well as the dark counsels of Providence
and the secrets of human destiny."
What exactly Colet studied when he came to Oxford is a little
difficult to explain, for the Revival of Learning has placed an
impassable gulf between the knowledge of that day and of ours.
The jargon of the Schoolmen has become unintelligible to us.
We can understand the studies of a Roger Ascham or a Queen
Elizabeth — Homer and Demosthenes and the Greek Testament,
— ^for to a large extent our training is the same ; but which of us,
I wonder, can boast of an intimate acquaintance with the books

14 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
which Colet must have read for his degree, — Priscian's Grammar,
the treatises of Boethius on Arithmetic and Music, the " Nova
Rhetoriea" of Cicero, the "De Interpretatione" of Aristotle?
There is only one work, in fact, on the list which is common to
the educational training of that day and our own, and this is
EucUd's Elements. When Colet arrived in Oxford the University
had not emerged from the intellectual mists of the Middle Vges.
In Italy the Revival of Learning had been in full progress for half
a century or more, but England was stUl practically untouched by
it. Exiles from Constantinople as early as 1441 had lectured in
Florence on the Greek classics. Cosimo de Medici, shortly before
his death in 1464, had founded the Platonic Academy ; but bar
barian England lagged behind, and it is extremely doubtftil
whether, when Colet first came to Oxford, there was a man in the
University, — Master, Doctor, or Vice-Chancellor, — who could
translate Greek into English. We can have no more striking illus
tration of the backwardness of England in culture and civilization
than the fact that a brother of the Black Prince once banqueted
with Petrarch, the first of the Italian Humanists, in the palace
of Galeazzo Visconti ; that is to say, while England was stUl feudal
and mediaeval, Italy, as Mr. J. H. Symonds tells us, " socially
and mentally, had entered upon the modern era."
Already, however, a stray scholar or two from Oxford had
found his way to the Italian Universities and had imbibed the gifts
of that New Learning which was destined so quickly to transform
the Ufe of Europe. Amongst the first of these was Thomas
Linacre, a Fellow of All Souls, the celebrated founder of the
College of Physicians, who, about the same time when Colet
arrived in Oxford, was receiving the highest education the world
could give, in company with Lorenzo de Medici's children at
Florence. To Florence also was drawn, as to the source of
knowledge and scholarship, another Oxford Fellow, WilUam
Grocyn, who studied under the great ItaUan humanist Politian,
and returning here, pubUcly taught the Greek language, much to
the pain of certain orthodox divines who regarded it as a Pagan
and heretical tongue. To WilUam Grocyn belongs the credit of
having opened the treasures of the New Learning to two of the

JOHN COLET. 15
most famous scholars of the next generation, Erasmus and Sir
Thomas More.
The third channel of communication between Italy and Eng
land was Colet himself He left Oxford in 1494, and spent the
next two years in Italy " like a merchant," as Erasmus writes,
"seeking goodly pearls." Unfortunately, we have no detailed
information regarding his life in Italy, nor do we know absolutely
that he visited Florence. The indirect evidence that he did so,
nevertheless, seems altogether convincing. The intellectual pre
dominance of Florence was at this period so marked that no
traveling scholar in search of knowledge could possibly have
avoided the fair city on the Arno where the greatest scholars and
men of letters and artists of the world had their home. Colet's
sermons and lectures bear the clearest marks of the influence
of three men, MarsiUo Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, and Girolamo
Savonarola, all Florentines, If Colet ever reached Florence at
all, and it is incredible that he did not, he must have come
directly into contact with the Prior of San Marco, at that time
the central figure in Florence. It is allowable to think of the
young Oxford student listening, with the artists Botticelli and
Michel Angelo, with historians Uke Machiavelli and Guicciardini,
with the most learned scholars and the humblest poor of
Florence, to the fiery words of Italy's most powerful preacher
as he stooi beneath the dome of Brunelleschi, denouncing the
corruptions of the Church and the evil lives of Popes and
prelates. This, of course, is mere guess work. But at any rate
it is beyond doubt that John Colet, first leader of the English
Renaissance, whether or not he ever saw Savonarola, is Savon
arola's spiritual disciple. You cannot read the sermons of the
two men without being struck by their close and intimate
resemblance. Their principles are identical — reform without
revolution, loyalty to the idea of the Catholic Church, unrelenting
warfare alike against worldly ecclesiastics and selfish, ambitious
tyrants, devotion to the Scriptures, Puritan morality.
The only historical evidence that we possess regarding this
ItaUan visit of Colet's is contained in the words of Erasmus.
" Colet devoted himself," he says, " at this time entirely to the

1 6 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
study of the sacred writers." The sentence is significant, and
indicates the course which the Revival of Letters was to take
in Germany and England, where Renaissance meant Reforma
tion — not a return to Paganism, but a return to Scriptural
Christianity. We should naturally have expected that in the
chosen home of the Classical Revival, Colet would have studied
chiefly, not S. Paul, but Plato and Cicero. Perhaps if he had
reached Italy five years earlier, when Lorenzo de Medici was
alive, when the enthusiasm for ancient civiUzation was at its
height, when Marsilio Ficino, it was said, kept a lamp burning
before the bust of Plato as well as before the image of the Virgin,
he too might have imbibed the sympathies of the Italian
Humanists. But he came to Italy during the epoch of the
reaction. Lorenzo was dead. Savonarola was all-powerful. The
reign of Pagan license was over for the time. Scorn was being
cast by the fervid monk upon all attempts to exalt the ancient
philosophers above the Christian writers as guides of life. The
Bible, and the Bible only, was preached from Savonarola's pulpit.
And so it came about that when, Colet returned to Oxford in
1496, fresh from contact with Italian learning, he began at once
to lecture, not upon the works of any classical author, but upon
S. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. His lectures mark an era in the
history of religious thought in England. Colet was an unauthor
ized teacher and had taken no degree in Divinity, but his fresh and
original treatment of the Scriptures drew all Oxford, abbots and
heads of houses included, to his lecture room-?. He was fiercely
in earnest, and disdained to receive fees frorh his hearers. " The
race for professorships and fees," he told Erasmus, " spoilt every
thing, and adulterated the purity of all branches of learning."
By a fortunate accident, the manuscripts of these lectures have
been preserved at Cambridge, and we can know accurately what
Colet's reUgious position was. In the first place, he was the
deadly foe of the Schoolmen and their absurd,- compUcated
methods of Scriptural interpretation. He did not, as some are
inclined to do in modern times, underrate the intellectual power
of such masters of subtle reasoning as S. Thomas Aquinas ; but
his ItaUan studies had brought him face to face with the New

JOHN COLET. 17
Testament, and the Renaissance spirit of free thought had made
him a rebel against a system of complicated beliefs and dogmatic
teachings resting upon no surer basis than a false and artificial
Scriptural interpretation. The Schoolmen treated the Bible as
a mere arsenal of texts. They despised its plain and literal
meaning, and insisted on finding types and allegories in the
simplest details. " They divide the Scripture," - says WilUam
Tyndale, "into four senses — the literal, tropological, allegorical,
and anagogical: the literal sense has become nothing at all.
Twenty doctors expound one text twenty ways, and with an
antitheme of half an inch some of them draw a thread of nine
days long. They not only say that the literal sense profiteth
nothing, but also that it is noisome and hurtful and- killeth the
soul. And this they prove by a text of Paul : ' The letter killeth,
but the spirit giveth life.' Lo !• they say, the literal sense killeth,
but the spirit giveth life."
Against all this Colet made incessant war. It is his great claim
to our respect that though he lived in the last years of the Middle
Age, though he was a loyal CathoUc, he yet rejected the teaching of
the scholastic divines, brushed aside their inventions and traditions,
and went back to the words and Ufe of Christ. He would have
nothing to do with S. Thomas Aquinas and his brief compendium
of doctrines to be beUeved extending to 1150 huge foUo pages,
containing, although the great doctor called his book " milk for
babes," forty-three separate propositions conceming the nature
of God, ten propositions regarding the Creation, forty-five respect
ing the nature of Man before and after the Fall, and treating as
not unimportant the discussion of such articles of faith as these :
Whether an angel can be in more than one place at one and the
same time ? Whether more angels than one can be in one and the
same place at the same time? Whether angels have local motion?
and a thousand similar inanities.
It is no wonder surely that the young Dutch scholar Erasmus,
brought under the influence of the scholastic divines at the
University of Paris, came to distrust theology. He dared not
study it, he said. If he did, he should soon be branded as a
heretic. The time had come when men were to be freed from

1 8 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
mediaeval burdens. " Keep firmly to the Bible and the Apostles'
Creed," was John Colet's advice to his pupils : " let divines, if
they like, dispute about the rest."
We must not suppose, however, that he had entirely freed
himself from the theological trammels of his time. Colet, intel
lectual child of the Renaissance though he was, amazing as was
the boldness with which he anticipated many of the conclusions
of modern religious thought, had, nevertheless, one foot in the
Middle Ages. No Protestant could have poured greater contempt
upon image-worship and pilgrimages than he did, but his temper
was ascetic and monastic. He had Uttie of the humanist spirit
which appears in all the writings of Erasmus and in More's
' Utopia.' The Paganism of the ItaUan scholars had forced him,
as it compelled Savonarola, to adopt narrow and illiberal opinions
regarding the classical authors. It does not appear to have been
generally noticed that when he founded S. Paul's School, he
omitted the study of Cicero and Virgil, Demosthenes and Plato^
and enjoined the reading only of such writers as "hath with
wisdom joined the pure chaste eloquence,'' such as the fourth
century author, Lactantius, who together with good Latinity
combined decent Christian morals. We should be glad to forget
that a Reformer so generally broad-minded as Colet once advised
his hearers at Oxford : " Those books only ought to be read in
which there is a salutary flavour of Christ — in which Christ is set
forth for us to feast upon. Do not become readers of philosophers,
companions of devils." He was a mediaevaUst too in his views on
marriage, which he regarded as an inferior state, as a concession
to human infirmities. When it was objected to him that if his
doctrines were adopted by Christians, the race of men would soon
become extinct and the Church be left without members, he only
pointed to the heathen as materials for grace. If they all became
Christians and remained single, then, he thought, the human race
would come to an end in a state of sanctity, and so much the
better. But, he added, with a touch of caustic humour, there
was no fear of such a result. The heathen might be converted
to Christianity, but just as fast professing Christians would relapse
into practical heathenism.

JOHN COLET. ig-
In these extreme opinions of his, we have Colet at his worst.
He is at his best and strongest when he leads the way to a rational
interpretation of the Bible. His greatness as a theologian is not
to be estimated by his own writings, but by the influence which he-
exercised over his friends. He taught Erasmus what Erasmus-
afterwards taught the world. He helped to make More what
he was — the boldest thinker and the most perfect man of his
generation. John Colet, however, was greater as a preacher than as a
theologian, and it is his work as Dean of S. Paul's which chiefly
merits attention. His lectures at Oxford brought him into
contact with many who influenced the future life of England ;
possibly with Wolsey, who in 1498 was a tutor in Magdalen
School ; possibly with William Tyndale, who was then an under
graduate of Magdalen Hall ; certainly with Erasmus, who had
been introduced to him in the same year, 1498. But Oxford was
still in bonds to the Schoolmen, looked with suspicion upon
new movements, and shewed no favour to the young scholar who
treated the Bible not as an armoury of texts, but as a literature,
as a Divine record indeed, but also as a book to be interpreted
like any other book. To the end of his stay in Oxford, Colet was
a mere free lance, unhonoured by his University, obliged to wait
patiently for an opportunity of advancing those great reforms in
Church and State for which he longed.
In the year 1505, the opportunity came, when he was made
Dean of S. Paul's by King Henry VII. It was a position of great
usefulness but of peculiar difficulty. The Bishop belonged to
the school of thought which was passing away, and from the
first regarded Colet as little better than a heretic. The Chapter
was corrupt, and demoraUzed by the ceaseless stream of wealth
which poured into its coffers from the offerings of the Cathedral.
Colet, like Savonarola, thought that those whose duty it was to
preach " Blessed are ye poor," had better not possess enormous
revenues and live like princes. He thought that the Church stood
in imminent danger of ruin from the worldly Uves of prelates, from
the abuses and scandals of ecclesiastical administration, which
had brought the clergy into universal contempt -with honest men.

20 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
" How much greediness and appetite of honour and dignity," he
boldly told Convocation in 1512, " is nowadays in men of the
Church! How run they, yea almost out of breath, from one
benefice to another : from the less to the more, from the lower to
the higher! Who seeth not this? Who seeing this sorroweth
not ? Moreover, these that are in the same dignities, the most
part of them doth go with so stately a countenance, and with so
high looks, that they seem not to be put in the humble bishopric
of Christ, but rather in the high lordship and power of the world."
Such a man as this was not Ukely to iind the Deanery of S. Paul's
in the early sixteenth century a bed of roses, nor did he. Like
Abbot Samson of S. Edmund's monastery, in Carlyle's famous
sketch, Colet had a sore time of it after his elevation to high
office. He attempted to reform his Chapter, and failed. The
greed and covetousness of the Canons were inveterate, and Colet's
reforming zeal was conquered by their dogged resistance.
He was more successful in making his Cathedral pulpit a centre
of influence. For twenty years he had been steadily preparing
himself for the work of a preacher, and had studied carefully, as
Erasmus tells us, the works of English poets in order that he might
speak to the hearts of the people. He had listened, in all proba
bility, to the sermons of Savonarola, and at any rate was animated
by the same glowing earnestness and lofty ambition to cleanse the
Church and stem the torrent of corruption which threatened to
engulf it in disaster. No such preaching as Colet's, it may be
safely asserted, had been heard in England for a hundred years.
In him the spirit of Hugh of Lincoln, who -withstood kings Uke
Richard Lionheart and John Lackland, of Robert Grosseteste,
who toiled laboriously to root out abuses and to reform the
Church, lived again. Not even Savonarola himself displayed
more fearless courage in denouncing powerful offenders and boldly
attacking flagrant crimes of princes and prelates. In the year 1512,
the Dean of S. Paul's was caUed upon by Archbishop Warham
the firm friend of the New Learning and its advocates, to preach
before Convocation, and his sermon, it has been rightly said by
Colet's most recent biographer, Mr. Lupton, " marks an epoch in
the history ofthe EngUsh Church. More truly than any other

JOHN COLET. 21
single speech or act, it deserves to be called the overture in the
great drama of the English Reformation." The Convocation of
1512 was not an inspiring audience for au earnest, pure-hearted
Church Reformer to look upon. No wise historical student trusts
any longer the partisan histories of the Reformation which our
grandfathers received as veracious ; but when all allowance has
been made for Protestant exaggerations, the case against the pre-
Reformation clergy remains overwhelmingly strong. Colet's Con
vocation audience would contain many prelates of the type of
Wolsey, then Dean of Lincoln, and Henry VIII.'s most trusted
minister, scheming politicians rather than rulers of the Church, as
worldly as Wolsey but without his genius. There would be some,
no doubt, of the same stamp as the young boy, shallow-brained,
but of noble family, whom Erasmus once decUned to cram for a
Bishopric ; some like the illiterate Bishop whom Sir Thomas More
satirized in a stinging epigram, one of the ignorant opponents of
the Revival of Letters, who defended the allegorical interpreta
tions of the Schoolmen by the usual text, " The letter killeth, but
the spirit giveth life," and drew down upon himself More's laugh
ing retort that he was " too illiterate for any letters to have killed
him, and if they had, he had no spirit to bring him to life again."
Half the prelates whom Colet had to address had received their
promotion, not through any especial holiness of life or fitness for
their offices, but purely on account of political services rendered to
the crown. Not a few of the Bishops were foreigners and lived
abroad. Some were thoroughly bad men, like James Stanley, a
connection of the Royal family, and a member of a noble house,
who in 1506 was pitchforked into a Bishopric, and soon became
notorious throughout England for the open immorality of his life.
The Convocation of 1512, it is clear, was not Ukely to receive with
acclamation the reforming projects of a Puritan like John Colet-
It had met together to arrange stronger measures for the extirpa
tion of heretics, and Colet told his hearers to their faces that the
most pernicious heresy of all was the evil and depraved lives ofthe
clergy. His opening words struck the keynote of his sermon.
"You are come together to-day, fathers and right wise men, to
hold a council. I wish that, mindful of your name and profession.

22 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
ye would consider of the reformation of ecclesiastical affairs ; for
never was it more necessary, and never did the state of the Church
more need your endeavours. For the Church, .the spouse of Christ,
which He -wished to be without spot or wrinkle, is become foul
and deformed."
The distinguishing mark of the reforming programme of Colet
and the Oxford Reformers was that it aimed atcljanges in life and
practice, not in doctrine. Colet has no word to say against Papal
Supremacy or the Mass, and there need be no doubt that if he had
lived he would have been found by the side of Thomas More,
contending hotly against Luther. But he thunders against the
worldiness and pride,the covetousness and luxury and secular occu
pations ofthe prelates of his day. " Magistracy in the Church,"
he tells dignitaries like Wolsey, " is nothing else than humble
service. He who is chief, let him be the servant of all." In the
ears of scandalous persons Uke James Stanley, Bishop of Ely, he
describes with unheard-of plainness of speech the immoral lives of
ecclesiastics. "They give themselves up to feasting and ban
queting," he says : " spend themselves in vain babbling, take part
in sports and plays, devote themselves to hunting and hawking ;
are drowned in the delights of this world." Worst of all the cor
ruptions of the time, however, Colet ranks the race for wealth
which had infected his order. " What else in these days," he asks
the astonished Convocation, " do we seek for in the Church than
rich benefices and promotions ? In these same promotions, what
else do we count upon but their fruits aud revenues ? We rush
after them with such eagerness, that we care not how many and
what duties or how great benefices we take, if only they have great
revenues. 0 Covetousness ! Paul rightly called thee the root of
all evil. From thee comes all this piling-up of benefices one on the
top of tlie other ; from thee quarrels about tithes, about offerings,
about mortuaries, about ecclesiastical right and title, for which we
fight as for our very lives. Why should I mention the rest ? Every
corruption, aU the ruin of the Church, all the scandals of the world,
come from the covetousness of priests."
And then the fiery Dean of S. Paul's went on to propose tis
remedies. No new laws were wanted, he said. Let the Bishops

JOHN COLET. 23
reform their lives. Let the ecclesiastical courts, which enabled the
clergy to prey upon the laity, be transformed. Let residence be
enforced, and wicked and ignorant persons be no longer admitted
to holy orders. Let the rulers of the Church, instead of posing as
princes and statesmen, watch over their flocks, hear the causes of
the poor, sustain the fatherless, and spend their lives in -works of
piety. Finally, Colet warned the Convocation, as though foreseeing the
catastrophe which was impending, that the need for reform was
urgent. "Consider the miserable state and condition of the
Church," he concluded, " and bend your whole minds to its
Reformation. Suffer not, fathers, suffer not this so illustrious
assembly to break up without result. Suffer not this your con
gregation to slip by for notiiing. Ye have indeed often been
assembled. But (if by your leave I may speak the truth) I see
not what fruit has as yet resulted from assemblies of this kind."
Colet might as well have preached to the winds. The only
result of the sermon seems to have been that henceforth the
Dean of S. Paul's was a marked man. Before the year was out a
charge of heresy was brought against him by his own Bishop,
Fitzjames of London, who had been hostile to him from the first.
The accusations were somewhat frivolous. The first was that he
had said that images were not to be worshipped; the second,
that he had denied that the command to Peter, " Feed- my lambs,"
had anything to do with Episcopal hospitality. Saint Peter having
possessed no Episcopal revenues ; the third, that he had reflected
upon his Bishop for his habit of reading his sermons. Colet
made no reply to such nonsense, and Archbishop Warham
indignantly rejected the charges.
Later on, Colet's enemies found a more serious -accusation
against him. It was an age of unjust and selfish wars, waged
mainly to satisfy the vanity or ambition of kings. In 1513, Henry
VIII. had engaged in one of these, and Colet, who hated all war
with passionate hatred, being called upon to preach a Good Friday
sermon before the King and his Court, with reckless boldness,
seized the occasion to denounce the war-fever of his time. " He
shewed," says Erasmus, " that when wicked men, out of hatred

24 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
and ambition, fought with and destroyed one another, they fought
under the banner not of Christ but of the devil. He shewed
further, how hard a thing it is to die a Christian death on the
field of battle : how few undertake a war except from hatred or
ambition ; and urged, in conclusion, that instead of imitating the
Caesars and Alexanders, the Christian ought rather to follow the
example of Christ his prince."
The zeal of Henry's soldiers had been damped by Colet's
earnest invective, and immediately after the sermon he was
summoned to an interview with the King. His enemies openly
rejoiced, and expected his speedy downfall. Henry VIIL,
however, was still generous and noble, and he treated Colet
with the greatest kindness. " Let every one have his own
doctor," lie said to his courtiers after the interview, " and let
every one favor his own ; this man is the doctor for me." " And
so," concludes Erasmus in his account of the matter, " certain
wolves departed, open-mouthed as the saying is, nor did any one
from that day forward venture to molest Colet."
He lived six years after this : long enough to see his teaching
carried forward and developed by Erasmus in his ' New Testament,'
and by Sir Thomas More in the ' Utopia' : long enough also to see
the first begginnings of that second Reforming movement which
was destined to obscure and destroy his own. He died in 151 9>
" to the great grief of the whole people," as his epitaph relates,
" by whom, for his integrity of life and divine gift of preaching,
he was the most beloved of all his time.''
That part of Dean Colet's work for England which met with
most immediate success, and was distinctively his own, as
compared with results which were due to his disciples Erasmus and
More, was his reform of education and the foundation of S. Paul's
School in London. In an age when schools in England were for
the most part barbarous and cruel, antiquated in method, devoted
to barren and useless studies, he founded a great institution
which became soon a veritable home of the New Learning, supplied
a model for the succeeding foundations of the Tudor epoch,
produced John Milton in the seventeenth century, and at the
present. date sends out probably a greater number of famous

JOHN COLET. 25
classical scholars than any other school in England. Colet was
drawn to this work partly by his hatred of Scholasticism and his
zeal for the Revival of Letters, partly by his love of children.
He lavished on S. Paul's property equivalent to £40,000 of our
money, and watched over its welfare with unremitting care.
He was perhaps even more anxious that his students should be
good men than great scholars, and would cordially have accepted
the saying of Ruskin in our o-wn time, " Education does not mean
teachiag people to know what they do not know. It means
teaching them to behave as they do not behave." " My intent b-y-
this school," he says in the statutes, " is specially to increase the
knowledge and worshipping of God and our Lord Christ Jesus,
and good Christian Ufe and manners in the children." The New
Learning, however, held a predominant place in Colet's new
scheme. Greek was taught at S. Paul's, greatly to the indignation
of Bishop Fitzjames and other advocates of the studies that were
passing away, who denounced Colet's school as a dangerous and
heretical institution. The best men of the Revival, on the other
hand, aided him in his work. The first High-master of the
school was William Lilly, a briUiant scholar, the companion of
More, who had traveled in Greece and had shared -with Grocyn
and Linacre the honor of being the first to bring back to
England knowledge of the Greek language. Erasmus himself
wrote grammars and text-books for Colet's students. Both he
and More were quick to see the importance of the new departure,
and it was indeed a movement of far-reaching consequences.
" The grammar schools of Edward the Sisth and of Elizabeth,'' says
J. R. Green, " in a word, the system of middle-class education which
by the close of the century had changed the very face of England,
were the direct results of Colet's foundation of S. Paul's." As for
the spirit in which he entered upon his work, the best illustration of
it is to be found in the preface to the Accidence which he wrote
for his scholars, which remains as a testimony to the gentle, tender
nature of one who has been called " the first of the Puritans," who
with all his severity " took a delight," as Erasmus says, " in the
purity and simplicity of nature that is in children." " I have been
-wilUng," Colet writes in the introduction to his book, "to speak

26 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
the things often before spoken in such manner as gladly young
beginners and tender wits might take and conceive. Wherefore,
I pray you, all Uttie babies, aU little children, learn gladly this
little treatise, and commend it diligently unto your memories.
Trusting of this beginning that ye shall proceed and grow to per
fect literature, and come at last to be great clerks. And lift up
your little white hands for me which prayeth for you to God : to
whom be all honour and imperial majesty and glory. Amen."
And there we must take leave of Dean Colet. " You would not
hesitate," wrote Erasmus to a friend when he died, " to inscribe
the name of this man in the roll of saints although uncanonised
by the Pope." " For generations," -wrote More, " we have not had
amongst us any one man more learned or holy."

LECTURE II.

^ta&ntu^.

" Erasmus was in truth, in his own age, the great Apostle of common-sense-
and of rational religion. He did not care for dogma ; and accordingly the
dogmas of Rome, which had the consent of the Christian world, were in his-
eyes preferable to the dogmas of Protestantism, which destroyed the unity of the
Church and threatened to open the way for every sort of extravagance. What
he did care for was practical Christianity, and that he advocated with an
earnestness and eloquence, and an unwearied devotion, which have perhaps-
never been surpassed. Peace, good-will, justice, righteousness, charity, — in
pleading the cause of these virtues he knew neither fear nor favor. From the
beginning to the end of his career he remained true to the great purpose of his-
life, which was to fight the battle of sound learning and plain common-sense
against the powers of ignorance and superstition, and a-mid all the convulsions
of that period he never once lost his mental balance." — R. B. Drummond.
" He was brilliantly gifted. His indust-ry never tired. His intellect was
true to itself ; and no worldly motives ever tempted him into insincerity. He
was even far braver than he professed to be. Had he been brought to the trial,
he would have borne it better than many a man who boasted louder of his
courage." — J. A. Froude.
" The one na-me in which the classical revival of Germany is summed up,
IS that of Erasmus. He is the typical northern scholar. No contemporary
Italian humanist had so great a reputation .- he was recognized on both sides of
the Alps as the literary chief of Europe." — Hibbert Lectures for 1883.
" A man ivith many faults, many weaknesses, with much vanity, with a want
of independence of character ; faults surely venial considering the circumstances
of his birth, his loneliness in the world, his want of natural friends, and even
of country, and his physical infirmities: but a man who in the great period of
dawning intellect, stood forth the foremost ; who in the scholar never forgot the
Christian ; whose avowed object it was to associate the cultivation of letters with
a simpler Christianity, a Christianity of life as of doctrine ; who in infiuence
at least was the greatest of the 'Reformers before the Reformation.^" —
Dean Milman.

LECTURE II.

THE difficulty which had to be met in speaking of the life of
Dean Colet was the scantiness of the materials which have
come down to us. The difficulty in the case of Erasmus is the
extreme abundance of materials and the boundless number of
interesting facts from which one has to select. I need hardly
say that of these three Oxford Reformers, Erasmus, both in his
own lifetime and since, has occupied by far the chief place in the
world's estimation. His life has been written many times, though
never perhaps in a manner worthy of the great scholar ; but no
English writer has thought it worth while to give us a complete
and adequate biography of Sir Thomas More. Colet aud More,
however, are mainly interesting to Englishmen. Erasmus belongs
to Europe. He is a cosmopoUtan, and no single country can
claim exclusive possession of him. Holland gave him birth.
France gave him education. England was generous to him when
poor and unkno-wn, and he loved her well, far better than his own
country — "bread-and-butter land," as he scornfully termed it.
Italy opened out to him the treasures of antiquity and enabled
him to lead the Renaissance movement North of the Alps.
Germany in the person of Charles V. courted him. Switzerland,
when the Lutheran struggle grew hot and furious, afforded him a
secure retreat during his later years. He wrote all his works in
Latin, the common language of all educated Europeans in his
time, and despised modern tongues, "uncouth, barbarous dialects,"
as they appeared to him. His position as chief amongst the
aristocracy of scholars turned the eyes of the learned upon him.
His own industry in letter-writing and his genial egotism combined
to make his personaUty better known than that of any other man

30 THE OXFORD REFORMERS,
in Western Christendom. He was many-sided, and the interest.
of his life is almost inexhaustible. In an hour's space it wiU be
hard to convey any adequate idea of his amazing activity as a
thinker and man of letters, of his friendships and his quarrels, of
his writing, of his unbounded influence over the educated men
of his age.
The youth of Erasmus is a tragic history which ought to incUne
us to a merciful judgment of his faults. The pitiful tale is no
doubt famiUar to most of you from the dramatic presentment of
it in tolerably faithful details in Charles Reade's novel, 'The
Cloister and the Hearth.' It is a terrible record of the suffering
and the evil which the supplanting of God's laws of human affection
by man's monastic theories too often caused during the Middle
Ages. Erasmus was the base-born son of a youth whom persecution
and diabolical fraud on the part of his relations forced into the
monastic life which he abhorred. This youth, Gerard, was the
ninth son of a respectable poor tradesman who Uved at Tergou in
Holland. Religious superstition induced his parents to believe
that they owed one child to God, that is, to the monks. This,.
added to the pressure of a hard struggle for existence, made them
resolve to consecrate Gerard, the wittiest and ablest of their sons,.
to the service of the Church. Gerard, however, was utterly
unwilling. The thought of a monastery was hateful to him, and
morever he had given his heart to a young girl named Margaret,.
daughter of a physician at Sevenbergen. They were pUghted, but
never married. Gerard was pursued by his family -wiUi unrelenting
persecution, and at last, in 1466, after Margaret had given birth
at Rotterdam to the child who afterwards became famous under
the name of Erasmus, he came to a final rupture with his parents
and fled to Rome, where he gained success as a skillfiil copyist of
manuscripts. His abiUty was great, and he seemed likely to rise
from this occupation to scholarship and a career as a lawyer,,
when a treacherous fraud on the part of his parents suddenly
changed his whole Ufe. They had never given up their intedlion
that he should become a monk, and inasmuch as Gerard's love
for Margaret stood in the way, they stooped to the basest artifice

ERASMUS. 3,
and sent him word that she was dead. In his despair he entered
a monastery and took the vows. Then soon afterwards returning
to his own country, he found Margaret alive and well. His love
for her had never wavered, but he was now a priest, sworn to a
ceKbate Ufe, and, -with heroic conscientiousness, he surrendered
his hopes of happiness and remained faithful to his priestly vows
until the day of his death. The hapless monk and the ill-fated
Margaret found now their one consolation in caring for the two
children who had been born to them. , Gerard sent his Uttie
Erasmus to the famous school of Deventer, and there Margaret,
hearing that the town was stricken by the plague and hastening
to save her son, caught the infection aild died. Gerard, not yet
forty years old, broken-hearted, soon followed her to the grave,
and at thirteen Erasmus was left an orphan in the charge of
cruel and unscrupulous guardians.
The second chapter in his life is no less gloomy and tragic. The
curse of enforced monasticism darkened his youth as it had his
father's. Gerard had been entrapped into the priesthood by a
cunning falsehood ; his son was inveigled into a monastery by
treachery concealed under the guise of friendship. All in vain,
his guardian, Peter Winckel, having embezzled his little property,
endeavored, first by persuasion, then by threats and fears, to
induce the lad to become a monk. Already at fifteen Erasmus
longed for a scholar's life. " From the very first," says Mark
Pattison, " the love of letters was the one ruling motive of his
career." He might have resisted successfully the determination
of his guardians to force him into a convent, but for the advice of
a false friend, Cornehus Werden, who had himself joined a mon
astery at Stein, and who drew for him attractive pictures of the
cultured leisure, the boundless opportunities for quiet study, the
serene piety, which were to be found with the monks. His scruples
were removed, and in the year 1486, at the age of nineteen, he
entered upon his probation. For a while all went well. He was
allowed to study as he chose, and monastic Ufe was made easy for ,
him. But long before the time arrived for taking the final step,
disenchantment came. He found himself surrounded by idle,
ignorant, and for the most part vicious men. The life of the

32 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
monks, once pure and holy, had reached its worst degradation in
the 15th century. "A monk's holy obedience," Erasmus wrote
in latter years, " consists in — what? In leading an honest, chaste,
and sober life ? Not the least. In acquiring learning, in study,
and industry ? Still less. A monk may be a glutton, a drunkard,
an ignorant, stupid, malignant, en-vious, bad man, but he has
broken no vow, he is within his holy obedience. He has only to
be the slave of a superior as bad as himself, and he is an exceUent
brother.'' Even had it been otherwise, had culture prevailed
instead of intense ignorance and coarseness, had piety and good
works existed instead of laziness and gluttony and drinking bouts
intermingled with outward observances and fastings, Erasmus
knew himself to be unfitted for the monastic career. His health
was feeble, his constitution liable to terrible disease. Frequent
fasting was an impossibiUty to him. Fish, the staple food of the
monastery, he could not eat. His heart, as he once said, was
Catholic,but his stomach was Protestant. Like most eager students
he found sleep difficult, and once aroused he could not sleep again.
As the day drew near when he must take the final step, his dis
like to the monastic existence became intensified. He appealed to
his guardians. He threw himself upon the humanity ofthe monks.
" Had they been," he wrote afterwards, " good. Christian, reUgious
men, they would have known how unfit I was for their Ufe. I was
neither made for them nor they for me." The monks, however,
would show him no mercy. They urged upon him that he had put his
hand to the plow and must not turn back. It would be a sin
before Heaven, and he would be infamous in the sight of all men,
if he now withdrew. They reminded him of the stigma and the
excommunication, social and religious, which awaited the apostate
monk. His scruples, they assured him, were mere devices of
Satan, which must be resisted and conquered. At last the poor
lad, coaxed, threatened, denounced, deserted by his guardians,
uncared for by his kinsmen, gave way and took the vows. Sis
years he spent in the monastery of Stein, not altogether unprofit
ably perhaps as regards his studies, for even there his indomitable
love of learning enabled him to become one of the most brilUant
Latin scholars of the time, but not -without evil effects on his moral

ERASMUS, 33
character, which he himself acknowledged -with remorse in latter
Ufe. At the end of six years, his deliverance came, and the most
painful chapter in his history closed. The Bishop of Cambray,
having hopes of being made a Cardinal at Rome, and needing a
secretary who could write for him with elegant Latinity, chose
Erasmus for the post ; but about the year 1492, ha-ving no further
need of his ser-vices, he set him free and aided him in becoming a
student at the University of Paris, then the chief centre of higher
education on this side of the Alps, thronged by 10,000 students,
mostly young, mostly poor. Paris, however, did little for Eras
mus. Scholastic studies chiefly prevailed, and the New Learning
of Italy had few adherents. There was indeed a Professor of
Greek, George Hermonymus of Sparta, but he was incompetent,
and as Erasmus said, " could not have taught if he would, and
would not if he could." Without Greek, however, Erasmus felt
that he was nothing. He longed for Italy, but was too miserably
poor to afford the journey. His poverty, indeed, exposed him at
Paris to the greatest hardships. At the College of Montaigu, to
which he belonged, the lodgings were filthy and pestilential, the
food loathsome, the treatment barbarous and cruel. Erasmus
declares that in this horrible place he had seen many students of
high promise struck down by bUndness, leprosy, and the plague.
" I brought away from my College at Paris," he says of himself,
" nothing but a broken constitution and plenty of vermin."
No hardships, however, could daunt the young scholar's enthu
siasm for learning. Disappointed in his hope of Italy, he made
his way to Oxford. Already he made his mark as a briUiant
member of the Republic of Letters, and was beginning to gather
round him a circle of faithful and attached friends. Amongst
these was his pupil, the rich English nobleman. Lord Mountjoy,
by whose generosity he was enabled to come to Oxford, and who
is entitled to the largest share of credit in aiding Erasmus to
become the greatest scholar of his time.
England received him with open arms, and at Oxford he soon
became the intimate friend of John Colet, Grocyn and Linacre,
the opponents of the old scholastic theology, the first founders of
the reformed learning in England. Here at last he received from

34 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
William Grocyn that knowledge of the Greek language which he
had so long desired in vain, gi-ving to the historian, Edmund
Gibbon, thereby the opportunity of uttering that malicious half-
truth of his, that " Erasmus learnt Greek at Oxford and taught
it at Cambridge." Without falling a victim to a puerile patriot
ism for one's own university, it may be permitted, perhaps, to
Oxford men to be proud that it was hither in the year 1498 that
Erasmus bent his steps to procure that new learning by whose
aid he afterwards so powerfully influenced the thought of
Europe. Oxford gave him something more than mere knowledge of
Greek. His friendship with Colet was of immense advantage to
Erasmus in determining the aims of his life, and in moderating
the Bohemian tendencies of the witty Paris student's nature.
Intellectually, when he arrived in Oxford, he was still in bondage
to the Schoolmen. It was Colet who set him free and taught him
that simpler, more reasonable Christianity which it was the work
of his Ufe to expound to the world.
This first visit to England brought him into contact with his
future life-long friend, Thomas More, the briUiant student whom
John Colet proclaimed to be the one soUtary genius whom England
at this time possessed. How or when they first became acquainted
we do not know ; but everybody, I suppose, has heard the famous
story related by one of More's biographers, that these two scholars,
whose fame was already known to each other, met accidentally at
the Lord Mayor's table in London. Soon the strangers were
involved in a furious argument, Erasmus, after his custom, abusing
the monks and clergy. More with great skill and ready wit
defending them. Erasmus had the worst of it, and at last it
dawned upon him that this quick-witted antagonist must be the
young genius whose praises John Colet had sung to him. " Aut
tu es Morus aut nullus," he suddenly exclaimed, and was met by
More's ready retort, " Aut tu es Erasmus aut diabolus."
The story may be apocryphal, though Mr. Seebohm, in his
excellent book on the Oxford Reformers, seems to countenance it.
What is certain is that from the year 1498 onward, Colet,
Erasmus, and More are bound together not only by a close

ERASMUS, 35
personii friendship, but also by community of aims and almost
identical -views on the great problems of their time.
Naturally enough, -with such friends, Erasmus grew attached to
England. " I am not a native of Britain," he once wrote to King
Henry VIIL, " and yet when I consider how many years I have
lived in that country, how many patrons, how many exceUent and
sincere friends I owe to it, I have as hearty a love and esteem for
it as if I had drawn my first breath in it." There was nothing in
England he disliked, except the beer ! He was surprised, but not
displeased, by the custom of the English ladies of according a
hearty salute ofthe lips to all stranger-guests when welcoming them
or bidding farewell. A native of Holland, he found our climate
endurable. It was as deUghtful as it was healthy, he reported to
his friends. As for the English folk, they were delightful too, only
he adds by way of warning, " You must always behave modestly, .
and not be too free in expressing your dislike of anything which
you may see in this country. For the English people are, not
without reason, lovers of their native land." England, moreover,
in his views was by no means the barbarian and uncultured cUme
its enemies depicted. " I have found here," he says, " so much
polish and learning — not showy, shallow learning, but profound
and exact, both in Latin and Greek — that now I hardly care much
about going to Italy at all, except for the sake of having been
there. When I listen to my friend Colet, it seems to me Uke
listening to Plato himself. In Grocyn, who does not admire the
-wide range of his knowledge ? What could be more searching,
deep and refined than the judgment of Linacre ? Whenever did
nature mould a character more gentle, endearing and happy than
Thomas More's?"
If John Colet could have had his way, Erasmus would never
have left England. He saw in him a splendid intellect, and the
fittest instrument for carrying on the work which he had begun.
He entreated him to remain at Oxford, to aid in getting rid of the
Scholastic theology which had obscured the Christian Gospel, to
do for the Old Testament what he himself was endeavouring to
do for St. Paul's Epistles. Erasmus refused. He was thirty-three
years old, and had been a student aU his life, but he counted

36 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
himself a mere tyro in scholarship and longed for the opportunities
which, after all, only Italy could give. Some day, he told Colet,
when he had matured his powers, he would help him in his great
work. In January, 1500, the restless scholar, panting for new
knowledge, left England for Italy.
Henceforth for fifteen years his history is a record of wander
ings from University to University, of hard struggles caused by
insufficient means, of gradual conquest of the whole realm of
knowledge as it then existed, of daily increasing reputation, of
amazing Uterary activity, of final triumph as the leading man of
letters in Europe, courted by Popes and Emperors and Kings. It
is almost bewildering to follow him in his wanderings from
England to France, from France to Holland, from Holland to
Italy, from Italy back to England. In 1500, after leaving Oxford,
he had intended to make his way beyond the Alps, but the EngUsh
custom-house officials robbed him of his money, and he was
obUged to betake himself to Paris and earn a few pounds by
the publication of his first important book, his 'Adagia,' or
collection of classical proverbs. Poor, and often in ill health,
his enthusiasm for learning never abated, and it is difficult not to
feel intense admiration for his heroic struggle against disease and
poverty a'nd gloom. " As soon as I get money," he writes at this
time, "I shall buy Greek books, and then I shall buy some clothes."
Not till 1505 did he realize the dream of his Ufe and visit Italy,
and even then he met with disappointment. The golden age of the
Renaissance was over. Instead of a peaceful land of culture and
ci-vilization, he found Italy distracted by war. The reigning Pope
was Julius II.,Michael Angelo's Julius, who was never happy except
at the head of an army, and who was ready to deluge Italy -with
blood if he might thereby enlarge the temporal dominion of
the Papacy. Erasmus, the consistent, determined, unflinching
denouncer of war, was brought face to face in the streets of
Bologna with a Vicar of Christ, arrayed in jackboots and military
attire, triumphing at the head of a mercenary army of scoundrels
and banditti over conquered foes. What Leo X. and Rome did
for Luther, Julius II. and Bologna did for Erasmus. He remained
all his life faithful to the idea of Papal Supremacy, but he did not

ERASMUS. 37
hesitate to denounce in the plainest language such popes as
Alexander VL, JuUus IL, and Leo X. While JuUus was still
alive he dared to use, in a satire which was read all over Europe,
such words as these. " Though war is so cruel," he wrote, " that it
becomes wild beasts rather than men, so pestilential that it brings
in its train a universal dissolution of manners, so impious that it
has no connection -with Christ, so unjust that it is usually carried
on best by the worst robbers ; yet, neglecting everything else, the
supreme Pontiffs make this the only business of their Ufe. Here
you may see even decrepit old men shewing all Ae vigour of
youth, incurring any expense, deterred by nothing, if only they
can overturn law, reUgion, peace, and throw all the world into
confusion." Thirty years later such words would have cost
Erasmus dear. For the present the Papacy, secure in its
unchallenged power, confident in its strength, bore -with easy
tolerance the shafts of ridicule which the wandering scholar
aimed at it.
His visit to Italy, notwithstanding, was of great importance to
Erasmus. It was, as it were, the completion of his twenty years of
preparatory study. He was now recognized by the scholars of
Italy as their equal and peer. He returned to England in the
year 1509, master of aU the learning Bologna and Florence and
Venice^ could give him, the intimate friend of the most famous
scholars of Italy, strengthened for his future struggle with the
monks by influence with the most powerful Cardinals at Rome.
As he crossed the Alps on his journey to England, he can scarcely
have been ignorant that he, the base-born son of the monk
Gerard, himself an apostate monk — for he had lately obtained
leave of the Pope to renounce the cowl of his order, was now by
universal consent the chief of Transalpine scholars, the supreme
Pontiff of the aristocracy of letters. His fame had now spread to
every land. Europe was ready to Usten with respect to his
slightest word.
He was not long in delivering his message, in shewing the
direction which the Teutonic Renaissance under his leadership
was likely to take. Traveling through Italy and France on his
mule, Erasmus had occupied himself with reflections upon what

38 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
he had seen ui Italy and the state of Christendom, which resulted
in the production at Sir Thomas More's house of his famous book
' The Praise of Folly.' Ostensibly it is a mere squib, a merry
piece of fun, composed by the great scholar to while away days
of great suffering by which he was at this time unfitted for serious
labor. In reality the ' Praise of Folly ' is one of the most power
ful satires of a century which produced the ' Epistles of Obscure
Men ' and More's ' Utopia.' It is a serious indictment of the
abuses of the time. Its exposure of the monks and the cor
ruption of the Church did much to prepare the way for the
Reformation. We in this day can scarcely grasp the opportunities possessed
by a man of letters who wrote in the common language of the
educated of all countries. The ' Encomium Moriae ' ran through
seven editions, twenty thousand copies, in a few months. Holbein
illustrated it. For years it was constantly being translated or
re-edited. A hundred and twenty years later, John Milton found
it in everybody's hands at Cambridge. UnUke many of the more
scholarly of the works of Erasmus and his contemporaries, which
repose decently in undisturbed rest on the shelves of our public
libraries, the ' Praise of Folly ' still Uves, made readable by its
blended sense and humour.
The idea of the little book is this. The goddess Folly ascends
a rostrum, arrayed in cap and bells, and pronounces upon herself
that eulogy which an ungrateful world has forgotten to accord to
her. She claims to be the chief of all goddesses, man's best
benefactress, the cause of all his happiness, the giver of all his
pleasures. " Who knows not," she argues, " that man's childhood
is by far the most delightful period of his existence ? And why ?
Because he is then most a fool. And next to that his youth, in
which folly still prevails ; while in proportion as he retires from
her dominion and becomes possessed, through discipline and
experience, of mature wisdom, his beauty loses its bloom, his
strength declines, his wit becomes less pungent. At last weary
old age succeeds, with a weariness which would be absolutely
unbearable, did not Folly, in pity of such grievous miseries, give
relief by bringing on a second childhood." It is true, she admits.

ERASMUS,

39

that Reason also has a share in influencing the life of men, but
then how small a share ! Jupiter intended them to be merry, and
took care that reason should exist in due subordination. More
over, as an antidote to the dangerous effects of wisdom. Folly
herself, had advised the creation of woman — "a fooUsh, silly
creature, no doubt," she says, " but amusing and agreeable, who
owes to me alone those endowments in which she excels and
surpasses man." Next, we are to mark how dependent we are
upon Folly for the joys of Ufe. She it is who makes friendship
possible by hiding each other's faults. Cupid, too, is a blind Uttie
fool. Woe , to society were it other-wise ! Self-esteem is only
another form of foolishness, but -without it the world could scarce
go on. " Take away this one property of a fool," she argues
wittily, " and the orator shall become as dumb and silent as the
pulpit he stands in ; the musician shall hang up his untouched
instrument on the wall ; the completest actors shall be hissed off
the stage; the painter shall himself vanish into an imaginary
landscape." On the other hand, what happiness does self-esteem
bring, which so flushes men with a good conceit of their own that
no one repents of his shape, his wit, of his education, or of his
country! so that the dirty half drowned Hollander would not
remove into the pleasant plains of Italy, nor the brutish Scythian
quit his thorny deserts to become an inhabitant of the Fortunate
Island. It is a mistake. Folly continues, to pay so much regard to wise
men. Geniuses manage their domestic concerns very badly.
Grave scholars are like death's-heads at a feast, like camels at a
dance, dull and useless in common life. They are no good either
for war or politics. In battle your Demosthenes runs away. The
best soldiers are courageous louts and shallow-brained plow-
boys. As for government and Plato's philosopher-kings, bookish
and learned governors are the worst in the world. A pretty
business the Catos and Gracchi and Brutuses made of it ! Even
Antoninus did not do his people so much good by his wisdom as
he did harm by leaving a Commodus to succeed him. Nature,
luckily, takes care that this curse of wisdom shall not become
hereditary. The children of Socrates were dull, insipid souls, or as

40 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
some one ingeniously expresses it — " they had more of the mother
than the father."
Worst of all, wise men are wretched. It is the fools who are
happy. Wisdom opens our eyes to the miserable spectacle of
the countless ills flesh is heir to: infirmity, disease and death;
besides aU that man inflicts upon his fellow — a prospect that
has to many sages made suicide sweet and welcome. Were
wisdom less rare, all would act thus and the race would become
extinct. The truly happy are the votaries of Folly, on whom
shame, disgrace, abuse, fall pointless. Her blessed illusions are
what bind men to life and give them joy.
After more of this admirable fooling, the goddess suddenly
forgets herself and becomes serious. She can joke no longer
when she has to speak of schoolmen and theologians, kings
and popes and monks, as they were at the end of the fifteenth
century. It is John Colet who speaks now. Erasmus has at
least redeemed his promise to aid him in his crusade both against
an obsolete theology and a corrupt and degraded church. Folly
claims the scholastic divines as her peculiar disciples. " It is by
one of my properties, self-love," she says, " that they fancy them
selves caught up to the third Heaven, from whence they look down
with contempt upon the whole human race as if they were cattle
creeping on the ground." She lashes the commentators, who
make darker what was dark before ; the theologians, who explain
exactly how the worlds were created and the foundations of the
earth were laid — " at whose conjectures," she observes drily,
" Nature is mightily amused ;" the divines, " who minutely
describe everything in the infernal regions as if they had passed
many years in that kingdom ; and concludes her attack upon the
schoolmen by a modest proposal to send the whole tribe of confident
controversialists to do battle against the Turks. Nothing, she is
sure, could stand against their invincible prowess.
The monks fare even worse than the theologians, and Erasmus
the Catholic rages against them far more bitterly than any
Protestant Foxe or Tyndale. " These very delightful men," he
writes, " who are remarkable for their dirt, their ignorance, their
clownish manners, who bellow for bread in front of our doors.

ERASMUS.

41

who bray out in church the psalms which they count indeed but
cannot understand, they pretend forsooth that they are the
genuine successors of the Apostles ! Their religion consists in
having their dress of the prescribed shape, material, pieces, their
girdle in so many knots, their sleep in so many divisions. They
strive not so much to be Uke Christ as to be unUke one another.
If they only knew what -will befall them on the last day, when the
Judge shall demand to see their works of charity ! What will
they have to shew ? Bushels of psalms sung, tons of fish eaten ;
one will bring his single hood never changed, another the gloves
without which for sixty years he never handled money, others wiU
point to numbness or paralysis brought on by the confinement of
the cell. But the Judge will interrupt them. 'Whence comes
this new race of Jews ! My mansions are promised to deeds of
faith and charity.- I will have righteousness and not traditions.' "
We might have expected that Erasmus, a Catholic priest, but
lately at Rome, in favor at the Papal Court, would have spared
Popes and Cardinals. But he does not. He has seen evil and
will denounce it, poor scholar though he is, dependent for his
very bread upon the donations of his friends. " Now as to the
Popes of Rome," he represents his mouth-piece Folly as saying —
" who pretend themselves Christ's -vicars, if they would but imitate
His exemplary life in the being attended with poverty, nakedness,
hunger, and a contempt of the world, what order of men would
be in a worse condition ? How much of their pleasure would be
abated if they were but endowed with one dram of wisdom? All
their riches, aU their honour, their Peter's patrimony, their offices,
their indulgences — in a word, all their perquisites would be
forfeited and lost ; and in their room would succeed watchings,
fastings, tears, prayers, hard studies, repenting sighs, and a
thousand such-like severe penalties. The very head of the
Church, the spiritual Prince, would then be brought from all his
splendor to the poor equipage of a scrip and staff. But all this
is upon the supposition only," he concludes with bitter sarcasm,
" that they understood what circumstances they are placed in ;
whereas now by a wholesome neglect of thinking, they live as well
as heart can wish : whatever of toil and drudgery belongs to their

42 THE OXFORD REFORMERS,
office, that they assign over to S. Peter or S. Paul, who have time
enough to mind it."
This, then, was the first fruit of the Renaissance working upon
the Teutonic mind — simply a moral revolt against the corrupt
Christianity of the time. The Humanists of Italy had ceased to
believe in the Gospel. The scholars of Germany and England
merely appealed from the false Christianity to the true ; and it
was this moral repulsion from the base and wicked lives of Popes
and clergy which made possible the success of Luther. It remains
a mystery how they could aUow Erasmus to proclaim their shame
to the world. Cardinals and worldly Bishops read the ' Praise
of Folly ' without a protest, -with amused indifference, with
admiration for this entertaining fellow Erasmus. They did not
dream that its destructive criticism might aid in rending the
Church asunder. They forgot that all men's consciences were not
dead like their own. They forgot that the great heart of the
world is just. Pope Leo X. read the book, and merely remarked
that Erasmus, too, had his corner in the region of Folly. It was
the same Pope, you may remember, who said when he was
shewn Martin Luther's ninety-five propositions, "A drunken
German wrote them ; when he has slept off his wine, he -will be
of another mind."
Successful as it was and universally read, the ' Praise of Folly '
did nothing towards helping Erasmus to live. He never seems
to have expected an income from the sale of his books. He
wrote because he could not help it, not in order to earn money.
And if you ask how he lived, I am afraid one must answer, by
constant, pertinacious, shameless begging. Erasmus was the
sturdy mendicant of Uterature, and his letters of this period consist
largely of humiliating appeals to his friends for money. He was
no longer exactly a poor man. Lord Mountjoy had given him a
pension for life of a hundred crowns. Archbishop Warham another
of like amount, and every year he received some hundreds of nobles
in presents from various patrons scattered all over Europe. He
possessed two horses, he himself tells us, " better fed than their
owner, and a couple of grooms better clothed than their master."
His friends, Colet and Linacre, from time to time seem to have

ERASMUS.

43

given him the hint to live more economically, and in modern
times, harsh critics of his career, Uke Mr. Froude, have accused
him of being a lover of pleasure, " a clever, healthy, epicurean man
of the world." Nothing could be more scandalously unjust. Eras
mus was really a devoted, hard-working scholar, whose profession
necessitated constant journeys to consult books and manuscripts,
whose frail health and diseased body made poverty doubly hard.
It is pitiable, no doubt, to read the letters in which he begs for
money, presses Colet for a few crowns, and blames Linacre for his
stinginess, but the shame of it does not belong entirely to Erasmus.
Here was a man, doing work for Europe that no other scholar in
the world could do, Uving centuries before the time when an author
could expect from an impersonal public an honourable reward, in
an epoch which saw a Wolsey rise from obscurity to boundless
wealth, at a time when abject flattery and ignoble services could
earn bishoprics and cardinals' hats : bravely refiising to cringe and
flatter, denouncing, as courageous men of letters have done in
every age, the crimes of the great and powerful, compelled to sue
to friends for a modest sustenance. I say the shame is not his.
We do not love Dean Colet when he writes to Erasmus, " If you
beg humbly I have something for you ; but if you ask immodestly,
poverty must help poverty, to say the least, very poorly. You will
do well in my opinion to imitate Diogenes." We admire, rather,
the ever generous and sympathetic Archbishop Warham. " I send
you thirty angels," he writes. " I -wish there were ten legions of
them. Use them for the recovery of your health, and I only wish
I could purchase health for you for a much larger sum. Take
good care of yourself, and do not defraud me by your illness of
the brilUant hopes I have entertained of you, and of the fruit of
your learning."
Erasmus had returned to England in the hope of obtaining that
independence which he felt was not to be had under Papal
patronage at Rome; and in 1511, this hope seemed about to be
reaUzed, when, by the influence of Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, one
of the best friends of the New Learning, he was appointed Lady
Margaret Professor of Divinity and in some sort reader in Greek
at Cambridge. Cambridge, however, was not kind to Erasmus.

44 THE OXFORD REFORMERS,
His enemies, the scholastic divines, still flourished there, and the
University was a little behind the times, being scarcely as far
advanced as Oxford was when Erasmus first visited it fourteen years
before. His lectures on the Greek language were badly attended,
and at the end of two years, having almost completed the great
work of his Ufe — his edition and translation of the New Testa
ment, he was thoroughly discontented, and ready to set out on his
travels again. " I have been livuig for some months," he writes
in 1513 to his friend Ammonius, " the Ufe of a snail, shut up at
home and buried in my books. Cambridge is a complete desert ;
most of the men are away for fear of the plague, though when they
are all here, even then it is a desert. The expense is intolerable,
and there is not a farthing to get. I am determined now to leave
no stone unturned, and, as they say, to cast my sheet anchor. If
I succeed, I shall make my nest. If not, I shall flit."
There is one episode of his stay at Cambridge which I ought to
notice before I pass on, because it illustrates exactly the attitude
of the Oxford Reformers to the ecclesiastical questions of the time,
and the direction which they thought reform should take. In one
of his best-known books, his 'Colloquies,' Erasmus has given us
an account of a pilgrimage which about this time John Colet and
himself made to the famous shrine of Thomas a Becket at Canter
bury. They were shewn the dagger of the saint, his skuU cased
in silver, and a perfect mine of bones ; all of which they were
expected to kiss, much to Colet's disgust. He seems to have
behaved indeed as badly as any Protestant could have done.
When the shrine of S. Thomas was displayed, blazing in gold
and jewels, he enquired from the guide whether S. Thomas
when he was alive was not very kind to the poor. The verger
assented. " Then," said Colet, " he would probably prefer that these
vast riches should go to lighten the burden of poor men's poverty
rather than that they should be hoarded here, useless to any one.' '
This, however, was not the worst. By and bye, the prior of
Canterbury, knowing Colet's distinguished position, opened a
chest, and taking out several dilapidated rags which S. Thomas
was reputed to have used to wipe his brow, offered one of
them to Colet as a present of untold value. "Again," says

ERASMUS.

45

Erasmus, "my friend was Very rude. He touched the rag
with the tips of his flngers, with a look of great disgust, and
contemptuously put it down, making at the same time a sort of
whistle, as was his way when displeased. I was ashamed of
him, but the Prior wisely took no notice of his rudeness, and
shortly took his leave. On our departure from Canterbury we
passed through a lane where a mendicant monk sprinkled us
-with holy water and invited Colet to kiss a shoe, which he
said was a relic of S. Thomas. "What!" Colet said to me
passionately, " do these idiots expect us to kiss the shoe of
every good man ? " So ended this curious pilgrimage of these
precursors of the Reformation. " In that meeting," says Dean
Stanley, " of the old monk with the two strangers in the Canter
bury lane, how completely do we read, in miniature, the whole
history of the coming revolution in Europe.''
The year 1514 found Erasmus at Basle, which henceforth
though he continued his restless wanderings, became his head
quarters and his real home. Here he formed a close friend
ship -with the great printer Froben, one of those scholarly men
-without whose enthusiastic help the Revival of Learning must
have been long delayed, from whose press at this time new
editions of Greek and Roman classics, of the writings of the
Fathers, of the New Testament itself, began to issue every
year. We may regard the period which we have now reached, that
which elapses between the year 1514 and the outbreak of the
Reformation struggle, as the happiest and most prosperous, the
most useful and fertile in great works, of the whole life of Erasmus.
He was now beyond the reach of poverty. Offers of promotion
and honourable posts reached him from every court in Europe :
from the Emperor Charles V., from the Kiiig of France, from
Pope Adrian VI. Amongst men of letters north of the Alps
he was -without a rival. His works were universally read ; he
had carried the educated world with him; his enemies were
discredited; scholasticism was dying; the New Learning was
everywhere triumphing. "Had Erasmus departed from the
world at this time," says Dean Milman, " it might have been

46 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
happier perhaps for himself — happier, no doubt, for his fame.
His character, in spite of inflrmities, would have been well-nigh
blameless. Though not himself, strictly speaking, to have been
enrolled in the noble and martyr band of the assertors of reUgious
freedom, he would have been honoured as the most illustrious of
their precursors and prophets, as having done more than any one
to break the bonds of scholasticism, superstition, ignorance, and
sacerdotal tyranny."
Of the books of this period, many in number, most of them
memorable, there are two only which I have time to notice. The
first of these is the ' Novum Instrumentum,' as Erasmus called it,
his edition of the Greek text of the New Testament, accompanied
by a fresh Latin translation of his own. It is a work which every
one ought to know something about. "It contributed more,"
says Mr. Mark Pattison, " to the liberation of the human mind
from the thraldom ofthe mediaeval clergy than allthe uproar and
rage of Luther's many pamphlets." What then exactly, was it, we
may ask, that Erasmus effected ? The answer must be, thatthrough
his agency the world was placed in possession of printed copies of
the New Testament, not in a Latin translation, but in the original
Greek. For centuries the Church had used no other version but
the Vulgate, the Latin translation due mainly to S. Jerome, which
alone was quoted by divines, and every word of which was regarded
by them as supernaturally inspired. It required the utmost daring
in the beginning of the sixteenth century even to hint that the
Vulgate was not always accurate. It seems incredible, but men
had largely forgotten that S. Paul and S. John did not write in
Latin, and the outcry was great when Erasmus printed the original
Greek text. He was correcting the Holy Ghost, the theologians
said. " It cannot be," wrote one, " that the unanimous universal
Church now for so many centuries has been mistaken, which has
always used the Vulgate version. Many will doubt if they learn
that even one jot or tittle iu the Holy Scriptures is false ; and then
will come to pass what Augustine described to Jerome, ' If any
error should be admitted to have crept into the Holy Scriptures,
what authority would be left to them ? ' " Erasmus, however, was
not deterred, and held on his way undismayed. He was confident

ERASMUS. • 47
of the truth of Christianity, and was the strongest opponent ofthe
sceptical scholars of Italy ; but he would not blind his eyes to
manifest facts. He was as fervent a beUever in the Bible as
Martin Luther himself, and in his preface to his New Testament
there is a noble passage which William Tyndale might have
written. " I altogether and utterly dissent," he says, " from those
who are un-wilUng that the Holy Scriptures, translated mto the
vulgar tongue, should be read by private persons, as though the
teachings of Christ were so abstruse as to be intelligible only to a
few theologians, or as though the safety of Scripture rested on
man's ignorance of it. It may be well to conceal the mysteries of
kings ; but Christ -willed that His mysteries should be pubUshed as
widely as possible. I wish that even the weakest woman should
read the Gospel — should read the Epistles of St. Paul. 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 traveler should beguile with their
stories the tedium ofhis journey." — Notwithstanding, he will not
consent to stultify his reason, and in the best sense of the word he
was a rationalist critic of the Bible. He fearlessly cast out from
his edition spurious texts like that of the 'three Heavenly Wit
nesses ' which remained in our English Bibles until the other day.
Following his great master, S. Jerome, he denied verbal inspira
tion, and pointed out that when S. Mark wrote Abiathar, he made
a mistake for Abimelech, and that often when the Apostles quote
from the Old Testament they do not give the exact words of the
original. He had doubts as to whether S. John wrote the Apo
calypse, and felt con-vinced that the Epistle to the Hebrews was
not written by S. Paul. He blundered often enough, it is true, as
was ine-vitable to a pioneer in a new path, but in a very real and
true sense he is entitled to be called the father of modern Biblical
criticism. It was not, however, views of this kind which gave the greatest
offence to the monks and theologians. It was bad enough that a
man should presume to correct the sacred Vulgate, and to remind
divines that they were ignorant of the language in wliich the
original documents of Christianity were -written, but in his notes

4$ THff OXFORD REFORMERS.
and annotations to his New Testament, Erasmus assailed the pop
ular religion of his day in the most uncompromising manner, and
struck at every abuse of the Church as boldly as WycUffe or
Luther. He attacked auricular confession, fasts and feasts, relics
and pilgrimages, even the celibacy of the clergy. He denied that
the words, " Upon this rock I -will build my church," applied
exclusively to the Pope. He refers contemptuously to the " mira
culous oil exhibited in the churches, the fragments of the Cross in
such quantities that if they could be brought together it would take
a merchant vessel to hold them all." In his note on S. Paul's
statement that he preached the Gospel without charge, he says,
" That was a boast truly worthy of an Apostle, but one which no
one in our days is ambitious of making. Nothing is to be had
now without money. You cannot even get buried free of cost."
Six years later he continued and developed these teachings in
the most famous of all his works, the ' Colloquies,' which was
pubUshed in 1522. It is a collection of dialogues and satires, free
and outspoken as ever — in spite of the fact that Luther had been
condemned by the Pope and the Reformation struggle had begun
— against the corruptions of Christianity. No book of his is more
characteristic of Erasmus than this ; in its humour, its common
sense, its detestation of falsehood and tyranny, its fervent appeals
on behalf of high and noble living. His tolerance is shown when
he declines to consign to damnation the good men of antiquity,
and wishes that more Christians could die like Socrates. He
comes very closely to the modern spirit when he asks ; May not
matrimony be as pure as celibacy ? Can we not trust that the
God of love will be as open to our prayers as any of His saints ?
What undutiful duteousness it is to go on pilgrimage to Jerusa
lem and leave a wife and Uttie children uncared-for at home ? Is
it not absurd to see the treasures of saints who, when on earth,
gave all to the poor ? Is not baptism a sufficient renunciation of
the world, -without taking monastic vows as well ? How many,
Uke the Pharisees, stop at ceremonies and never aim at charity?
Do the begging friars remember the words, " It is more blessed to
give than to receive," or the ascetics that the Son of Man came
eating and drinking ?

¦ERASMUS. 49
Once more, we have to ask in vain : How did Erasmus escape
being punished as a heretic ? It was not until 1526 that the
University of Paris condemned the ' Colloquies' as a work in
which the author, " Uke a heathen, ridicules, satirizes, and sneers
at the Christian religion and its holy ceremonies and observances."
Itwas not until after his death, that the Inquisition placed the
book upon the Index, and forbade any loyal CathoUc to read it.
We come now to the most important and difficult problem in
the life of Erasmus, his attitude toward Luther and the Refor
mation. How is it, we hear it continuaUy asked, that this man
who hated monkery, ridiculed relics and pilgrimages and prayers
to the saints, disbelieved in confession and celibacy, venerated the
Scripture, and decUned to allow complete autocracy to the Papacy,
who longed to cleanse the Church of its corruptions and restore
Christianity to its primitive purity- — ^how is it that he, Uke Sir
Thomas More, his fellow-disciple, is found at last in hostility to
Luther, on the side of Romanism and the Pope ?
The popular theory seems to be that Erasmus would have sided
with Luther if he had not been a coward, too fond of his ease and
his reputation to battle for a cause which he knew in his heart to
be just : that he, in fact, sacrificed his convictions to his interests,
and sold himself to the devil. " He knew Luther to be right,"
says Froude, in his brilliant and most misleading essay on the
subject. " Luther had but said what Erasmus all his life had been
convinced of, and Luther looked to see him come forward and
take his place at his side. Had Erasmus done so, the course of
events would have been far happier and better. But there would
have been some danger — danger to the leaders, if certainty of
triumph to the cause — and Erasmus had no gift of martyrdom."
No gift of martyrdom ! It is true. Erasmus, it may be freely
admitted, had not the moral heroism of Luther. It is difficult to
imagine him confronting an assembly of eager enemies thirsting^
for his death, and boldly throwing down his gage of battle :
" Here stand I. I will not retract. God help me. Amen." No
doubt the chief fault of Erasmus was timidity, the timidity of
a toil-worn scholar, growing old, longing for peace, made weak
by fifty years' struggle against the most painful and distracting-

so THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
malady known to man. " Not every one has strength for martyr
dom," he himself wrote, -with noble humility : " If I were put in
S. Peter's place, I fear I should imitate S. Peter."
The truth, however, seems to be this. Erasmus has been
traduced by both CathoUcs and Protestants. Plis influence
w^s the most important and weighty in all Europe, and both
parties strove hard to -win him for their own. But he belonged
to neither of them. He occupied a middle position, too much a
Reformer for monks and Papal theologians, too Uttie a revolu
tionist for Luther and his followers. He was the Lord Falkland
of the Reformation, and, like Lord Falkland, he has been accused
of cowardice and inconsistency, irresolution and treason to the
right, when his real crime was that he was too clear-sighteid to
become a narrow partisan, too honest to shut his eyes to the
grievous faults on both sides. All honour to martyrs : to Luther
with his single-hearted devotedness to what he believed to be the
truth, to Sir Thomas More with his noble sacrifice of his life in a
cause he beUeved to be sacred ! But whose heart does not go out
in sympathy to this maligned scholar, who had spent his existence
in brave battUng against corruption and wickedness, now made the
mark for violent abuse and coarse invective, condemned by all later
generations as a coward and a time-server because he was too con
scientious to join heartily with Pope and Cardinals against Luther,
too far-sighted to welcome with delight the prospect of a divided
Christendom and centuries of horrible civil war waged in the name
of religion, which he saw Luther's -violent policy would make
inevitable ? It is idle to complain that he did not take his stand
by Luther's side, that he was not ready to die in defence of Luther's
doctrines. He had no belief in them. Mr. Froude is positively
mistaken when he declares that Erasmus knew Luther to be in
the right. The two men agreed only in denouncing the abuses of
CathoUcism, the worship of relics, the corruption of the monastic
orders, the worldly and evil lives of Bishops and Cardinals, and so
forth ; otherwise they were as far asunder as the poles. For Luther's
dogma of justification by faith, rightly or wrongly, Erasmus
had the greatest abhorrence. He hated theological metaphysics,
and his common sense revolted aganist Luther's strenuous assertion

ERASMUS.

SI

ofthe non-freedom ofthe human will, which lay at the root of all
his teaching. Erasmus treated it as an absurd paradox. Luther
says of it, " This matter is to me serious, necessary, and eternal,
more momentous than life itself, and to be asserted, even should
it plunge the world into conflict, or bring it to chaos." He did
not shrink from the most extreme inferences that could be drawn
from his favourite doctrine, and when Erasmus inquired what men
would take trouble to amend their Uves if they had satisfied them
selves that all their actions were pre-determined and necessary, he
boldly replied ; " No one wiU amend his Ufe ; the elect wiU have
theirs amended for them; the non-elect must perish in their
misery." That fatal sentence of his is almost sufficient justifi
cation of the position of Erasmus, from which he never swerved :
" Do the will of Christ, and leave dark mysteries alone."
It is difficult again to see why he should be blamed for not
following the example of Luther in rebelling against the Papacy
and dividing the Christian Church. Luther, at the beginning of
his reforming career, believed in the Papacy as much as he did.
He did not turn against the Pope until the Pope turned against
him, and we have his o-wn word for it that if Leo X. had given
way on two points — the granting of the cup to the laity and
marriage to the clergy — there would have been no schism. The
difference between the two men lay here. Both aimed at reforms
in the CathoUc Church. Erasmus believed that they could be
brought about gradually, peacefully, by the spread of education,
without destroying the unity of the Church and plunging Europe
into centuries of fatricidal war. Luther, on the contrary, was a
-violent revolutionist, prepared to break with the past, ready to
sacrifice unity and brotherhood for what he believed to be the
-victory of truth. I do not contend that Luther was wrong and
Erasmus right. Certainly, we have paid a hea-vy price for the free
dom which the Reformation gave ; but it may have been inevitable.
It may well have been that the Church was too corrupt to be
cleansed by the moderate and peaceful methods of the Oxford
Reformers. The dream of Erasmus of a broad, comprehensive,
tolerant Catholic Church, whose enforced dogmas should be few,
whose theology should be simple, whose prelates should be

52 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
servants of the people, whose dignitaries should imitate the
poverty, humility, the self-sacrifice of Christ, whose ministers
should be the first to raise their voices on behalf of the poor and
oppressed, whose aim should be to put an end to war and tyranny
and needless suffering and to inaugurate the Kingdom of God upon
earth — this no doubt was too noble an ideal for the sixteenth
century to attain to, nor has the nineteenth realized it. But for all
that, the life of Erasmus, though it went out in pain and anguish
and gloom, amid the crash and storm of the Reformation conflict,
was not a failure. The world would not listen to him then. It
is listening now.

LECTURE III.

Mr Whtnnus More.

" It is unfortunate for More's reputation that he has been adopted as the
champion of a party and a cause which is arrayed in hostility to the liberties
and constitution of his country. Apart from the partisan use which is made of
his name, we must rank him amongst the noblest minds of England, as one
who became the victim of a tyrant whose policy he disapproved and whose servile
instruments he despised." — Mark Pattison.
" Of all men nearly perfect. Sir Thomas More had, perhaps, the clearest
marks of individual character. His peculiarities, though distinguishing him
from, all others, were yet withheld from growing into moral faults. It is not
enough to say of him that he was unajfected, that he was natural, that he was
simple ; so the larger part of truly great men have been . But there is something
homespun in More which is common to him with scarcely any other. This
quality bound together his genius and learning, his eloquence and fame, with
his homely and daily duties, bestowing u genuineness on all his good qualities!
a dignity on the most ordinary offices of life, and an accessible familiarity on
the virtues of a hero and a martyr, which silences every suspicion that his
excellences were magnified." — Sir James Mackintosh.
" One of the marvels of More was his infinite variety. He could write
epigra?ns in a hair shirt atthe Carthusian Convent ; and pass from translating
Lucian to lecturing on Augustine at the Church of S. Lawrence, Devout
almost to superstition, he was lighthea-rted almost to buffoonery. One hour we
see him encouraging Erasmus in his love of Greek and the New Learning, or
charming with his ready wit the supper-tables of the Court, or turning a debate
in Parliament ; the next at home, surrounded by friends and familiar servants,
by wife a-nd children, and children's children, dwelling among them in an
atmosphere of love a-nd music, prayers and irony — throwing the rein, as it weret
on the neck of his most careless fancies, and condescending to follow out the
humours of his monkey and the fool. His fortune was almost as various. From
his utter indifference to show and money, he must have been a strange successor
to Wolsey. He had thought as little about fame as Shakspere ; yet in the next
generation it was an honour to an Englishman throughout Europe to be the
countryman of More," — Edinburgh Review, 1S46.

LECTURE III.

THOMAS MORE was born, it is now cleariy estabUshed,
in the year 1478, seven years after Machiavelli, five years
before Luther. We shall perhaps be better able to understand
him if we remember that two years before his birth William
Caxton set up the first English printing press at Westminster, and
that when he was a lad of fourteen Christopher Columbus set
forth on his first voyage of discovery. More's father was a
prosperous barrister, who afterwards became Sir John More, and
a judge in the Court of King's Bench. He sent his son, after the
custom of the time, to be brought up in the household of one of
the great men of the day. Cardinal Morton, Archbishop of
Canterbury, and prime minister to that royal miser, Henry VII.
The Cardinal lives in some of our older histories as a financier
and an extortioner, and especially as the witty inventor of ' Morton's
fork.' It was part of his business to fleece as extensively as
possible the merchants of London in order to swell the King's
treasury. When they appeared before him to settle the amount
of their taxes or loans, he would tell those who came richly attired,
that as they were evidently wealthy they could afford to give
largely ; while on the other hand, those who came meanly and
poorly dressed, he accused of saving money, and made them pay
handsomely also. Morton, however, deserves to be remembered
as a generous benefactor of learning, and above all as having
been the first to detect the extraordinary talents of young More.
"Whosoever shall live to see it," he used to tell his guests, "this
child waiting at table shall prove a rare and notable man." It
was one of the pleasures of rich noblemen and prelates of that
age, who recognised that wealth has its duties as well as its rights,

56 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
to give to youths of great abilities and slender means, the oppor
tunity of becoming learned men. It was the generous support
extended to him when poor by an English nobleman. Lord
Mountjoy, which enabled Erasmus to become the leading scholar
in Europe. Similarly, More was sent to Oxford at Cardinal
Morton's expense,
He found the University in the ferment of an intellectual
revolution, caused by the teachings of scholars like Grocyn and
Colet, who were opening to eager students the treasures of Greek
literature. As a consequence new doctrines in science, in politics,
in reUgion, began to be preached, and the older teachers grew
alarmed. They detested the new studies and charged the Greek
students with heresy and infidelity. Like many foolish persons
since, thoy appealed to the wisdom of their ancestors : what was
good enough for their fathers was good enough for them. More
ranged himself at once on the side of the New Learning, and
became Colet's loyal and enthusiastic disciple.
He was not allowed, however, to stay long at Oxford. His
father, an orthodox person of the old school, anxious above all
things for his son to become a successful barrister, took fright
when he heard of the new-fangled dangerous Greek studies, and
removed him to the law schools in London. Here More devoted
himself to his profession, and rapidly came to the front. But he
did not forget Erasmus and Colet, nor the New Learning, and so
we find him at the age of twenty-three, lecturing on S. Augustine's
' City of God ' to an audience which included all the learned
men of the time. -
The year .1504 saw him in Parliament, and at once an oppor
tunity was given of she-wing what was the attitude of men of the
New Learning to politics. That was the age, as every one knows,
of slavish and subservient Parliaments, and this was the most sub
servient of all, controlled by the two ministers of Henry's avarice,
Empson and Dudley. In 1504 the King was about to marry his
eldest daughter to the Scottish King, and was legally entitled to
demand from Parliament a grant of about £30,000. Instead of
that, however, his ministers asked for a subsidy of £113,000;
and the House of Commons, afraid to resist the extortion, was

SIR THOMAS MORE. 57
about to pass the grant, when Thomas More, the youngest burgess
in the House, rose in his place and delivered so eloquent and
energetic a protest, that when it came to a decision the King's
demand was cut down to one-fourth of what he had asked.
More's conduct was reported to the King by his officials, who
informed him that all his plans had been defeated by a " beard
less boy."
Those were not days when it was altogether safe to oppose the
wishes of the sovereign, or to take a patriotic course in Parliament,
and the ignoble King soon found means of punishment. He
threw More's father into prison and compelled him to pay a fine,
while More himself was obliged to retire from public life, and at
¦one time seriously contemplated leaving the country.
In his retirement, there came upon him again a longing, which
had never left him, to follow the example of the saintliest Christians
of the last five centuries and enter a monastery. There had
always been two tendencies smuggling for mastery within him —
one the monkish, ascetic ideal of the Middle Ages — the other,
the ideal of a freer, wider Christianity formulated by the men of
the New Learning. At one time, accordingly, we find him deep
in classical studies, writing stinging epigrams against tyranny, and
perfecting himself in music, his passionate delight ; while shortly
afterwards, it is recorded of him that he took lodgings near the
Charterhouse, and subjected himself daily to the most painful
austerities of the most severe of monks. It seemed exceedingly
probable in the year 1505 that More would take upon himself
' religious vows and end his days in a monastery. He was saved
from such a career, partly by the influence of his humanist friends,
partly by flnding that the religious orders were corrupt, and that
the cloister was not the most favorable place ih the world just
then for a pious and useful life.
When we next catch a glimpse of More, he is married, in full
practice at the bar, with all monastic dreams thrown to the winds.
His marriage deserves a word of notice. Those were the days of
unromantic unions, and More's was no exception, but there is a
touch of Quixotic chivalry about it which makes it interesting.
The -wife he chose was Jane Colt, the daughter of an Essex

58 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
gentleman. Let me quote to you the account of the matter given
by William Roper, his son-in-law, whose quaint simple, biography
contains most of what we know conceming More. " Although,"
says Roper, " Master More's mind most served him to the second
daughter of Mr. Colt, for that he thought her the fairest and best
favoured ; yet when he considered that it would be both great grief
and some shame also to the eldest to see her younger sister in
marriage preferred before her, he then of a certain pity framed
his fancy towards her and soon after married her." I presume that^
in spite of the lamentable lack of romance in this episode, there
is a height of heroic virtue in it of which most of us do not feel
ourselves capable. The marriage, however, proved an ideal one..
More devoted himself tenderly to the young girl whom he had
thus chosen, teaching her music and languages, making her the
associate of his intellectual life ; and when, unhappily, she died in
early youth, he transferred his affection to their eldest daughter-
Margaret, destined thereafter to become one of the most celebrated
women in Europe.
His second marriage was entered into purely for the sake of his
little children, and it would seem that, like Socrates before him,
Richard Hooker and many another great man after him. More
was unfortunate. Dame Alice Middleton, his second wife, appears
from all descriptions to have been an exceedingly commonplace,
stupid and worldly woman, in every way the exact opposite of her
husband and admirably calculated to drive him to distraction apd
despair. More's sunny good nature, however, conquered every
obstacle. No word of complaint ever escaped him. She was, he
admits, " nec bella nec puella," but says Erasmus, " More lived
with her on such terms of respect and kindness as if she had been
both." William Roper tells us that he lived in the same house
with More for sixteen years, and never once saw him ui a temper,.
or heard him use a harsh or ungentle word. His home life,
indeed, constitutes an ideal which has never been surpassed.
When Henry VII. died, all obstacles to More's success in life
vanished, and his rise in his profession became unprecedentedly
rapid. He was engaged in every important case in the courts,.
earned an income of about £6,000 of our money, attracted the

SIR THOMAS MORE.

59

attention of the young King by winning a lawsuit for the Pope
against him, was knighted and made a Privy Councillor, and con
stantly employed on embassies to the continent. These successes,
however, were common to him with others. What was peculiar to
More was his view of the legal profession, which I am afraid even
at this day would be denounced as Utopian and impossible.
Nevertheless it remains true that in that far-off, barbarian century,
the leading barrister in England laid down these three rules of
conduct and kept them. Firstly, when people came to him eager
to go to law with their adversaries, he invariably tried to induce
them to settle their quarrels without an appeal to the law courts.
One shudders to think of the fate of any unhappy lawyer of to-day
who should venture upon conduct so entirely unprofessional.
Secondly, he had so absurd and fantastic a notion of rectitude,
that he would never undertake a cause of whose justice he was not
beforehand thoroughly convinced. And, thirdly, he would never
receive a farthing in fees from widows or orphans or poor people.
There is enough, surely, in such conduct of a barrister to entitle
him to the name of a social reformer, even if he had never written
the ' Utopia.'
And now let me turn to that most remarkable book of his, the
first product of Renaissance free thought in the English language.
The ' Utopia' is a work which iu our busy century, distracted as
it is by an immense variety of intellectual interests, every one
knows about and few people read. I respectfully submit to you
that the ideas of a reno-wned scholar, of the most famous EngUsh
man of letters of his generation, upon some of the most important
questions of human life, are worth perusal, even though they are
nearly four centuries old. And for these reasons. Whatever
other value the ' Utopia' may have, it is absolutely indispensable
to the historical student as a revelation of the social condition of
our country in early Tudor times. Next it is important as being
the first fruits in English literature of that great re-vival of learning,
of that new birth of knowledge, which makes the eariy sixteenth
century the seed-time of modern civilization. You can trace in it-
also the marks of the wide difference which separates the Revival
of Learning in Italy from the corresponding movement in our

6o THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
own country. More was not the only scholar who put forth
to the world at this period a treatise oh government and the
well-being of States. At the very time when he was preparing
the ' Utopia,' another great thinker,' Machiavelli of Florence, was
composing that little book, ' The Prince,' which became the hand
book of kings and statesmen for a century. The contrast
between these two is instructive. One discovers that whereas in
Italy the revolt against the Middle Ages and the Revival of
Learning meant Paganism in religion, utter degradation in morals,
tyranny, craft and selfishness in statesmanship; in England,
through the influence of men like Erasmus and Colet and More,
the Renaissance was Christian in its tendencies, filled with visions
of a higher and nobler morality, fervently devoted to the cause of
liberty and good government, and maintaining above all things
that the sovereign exists for the people, not the people for the
sovereign. Free thought in Italy produced only great learning
and great license : in Engla.nd it took a religious form. Free
thought in Italy, fed though it was on the best models of Greece
and Rome, allied itself with tyranny and led to the Age of the
Despots. Free thought in England produced not only the protest
of More, but also the great rebellion of the seventeenth century
against Stuart despotism. Furthermore, the ' Utopia' must take its
place in literature amongst those speculative productions of the
human mind of which Plato's ' Republic' is the first and greatest
example. Practical Englishmen, to whom for the most part
Providence has' denied the gift of imagination, are inclined to
regard such works with some degree of impatience and scorn. A
great and honoured EngUshman, for example, Mr. John Bright,
told us some years ago, without any apparent bashfulness or
shame, that the best part of Professor Jowett's translation of
Plato's ' Republic' was the translator's excellent English, Plato's
subject matter being considered almost worthless. However, in
More's 'Utopia' there is comfort for us. He was a shrewd, hard-
headed Englishman himself, and this work of his is differentiated
entirely from all other ideal commonwealths by this — that it is
not merely a picture of perfection, nor a speculation as to what
might be if men were angels, but it also contains a practical

SIR THOMAS MORE. 6i
programme of reform in EngUsh society which, to a large extent,
has been realized. Without doubt that is the pecuUar interest of
the ' Utopia,' that for two centuries we have been slowly, surely,
approaching More's ideal and converting his dreams into accom
phshed facts. Let me take one or two instances out of many.
We pride ourselves to-day — do we not? — a good deal on our
enUghtened measures to prevent increase of crime by good
government and education. That idea is first found in More's
' Utopia.' He denounces the system of pure repression and brutal
punishment. " If," he says, " you suffer your people to be ill
educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy,
and then punish them for those crimes to which their first educa
tion disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but
that you first make thieves and then punish them ? "
Again, it has been one of the great social reformations of the
nineteenth century that through the efforts of Sir Samuel Romilly,
Sir James Mackintosh, and their co-workers, the barbarous
criminal code, which punished nearly two hundred offences -with
death, has been abolished. It was not Sir Samuel Romilly, how
ever, but Sir Thomas More, three centuries ahead of his time, who
first urged with passionate earnestness the plea that no man should
be put to death for theft and other venial offences. " If, by the
Mosaical law," argued More, " though it was rough and severe as
being laid upon a people obstinate and servile, men were only
fined and not put to death for theft, we cannot imagine that in the
new law of mercy, God has given us a greater license to cruelty
than He did to the Jews. It is plain and obvious, that it is
absurd and of ill consequence to the commonwealth, that a thief
and a murderer should be equally punished. Extreme justice is
extreme injury."
Again, if there is one blessing more than another which we
prize in this age, it is the pri-vilege of every man to hold what
religious behef seems best to himself, without persecution, -without
let or hindrance from any one. I do not say that the old bad spirit
of persecution for reUgious opinions is entirely extinct, but at any
rate it is ashamed of itself, and the power of imposing penalties
upon one's neighbour for his differences of religious creed is

62 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
rapidly disappearing. Now the very idea of toleration in reUgion,
that great, prominent feature of modern life, was first given to
England by Sir Thomas More. He is as much the original dis
coverer of it as Columbus was of the islands of America, or Sir
Isaac Ne-wton of the doctrine of gravitation. " The founder of
Utopia," he tells us, " made a law that every man might be of
what religion he pleased, and might endeavour to draw others to
it by the force of argument and by amicable and modest ways, but
without bitterness against those of other opinions." The history
of toleration is but a commentary on those words of More's, and
it may be doubted whether we have yet sufficiently honoured the
noble genius and nobler heart of the man who, three hundred and
seventy years ago, -with the mental mists and darkness of the
Middle Ages still about him, gave utterance to such a thought.
Whatever faults it may have as a literary composition, the
' Utopia ' is not deficient in humour. Like all the work both of
Erasmus and More, it abounds in delicate irony, and quiet,
sometimes almost imperceptible, satirical touches. No one who
will read between the lines, and who knows anything ofthe history
ofthe time, can possibly find it duU. Here are one or two instances
taken at random. One of the chief evils of More's Ufe was the
number and corruption of the monks. " In Utopia," he writes
gravely, " all the priests are men of eminent piety ; therefore, their
number is few." There was a fooUsh rage in England in Henry's
reign for jewels and precious stones for use in dress. " In Utopia,"
says More contemptuously, " they find pearls on their coast, dia
monds and carbuncles on their rocks ; with these they adorn their
children, who are delighted -with them and glory in them during
their childhood ; but when they grow to years and see that none
but children use such baubles, they, of their o-wn accord, lay them
aside, and would be as much ashamed to use them afterwards, as
children among us, when they come to years, are of their puppets
and other toys." Gold and silver, too, were despised in Utopia
as metals of little use, and, very significantly, were used to make
fetters for slaves. Apparently, More had a poor opinion of the
English field sports of his time, for he remarks that " among the
Utopians all this business of hunting is turned over to their

SIR THOMAS MORE. 63
butchers : and they look upon hunting as one of the basest parts
•of a butcher's work.''
Occasionally, More's satire is delightfully delicate, as when he
teUs us that in his imaginary State, no leagues, or treaties, or
alliances are ever made with other nations, the Utopians having
no beUef in them. He then observes with a quiet chuckle,
" Perhaps they would change their mind if they lived amongst
us." He Uved in an age of abominable and lying diplomacy,
when neither King, nor Emperor, nor Pope could be trusted to
keep his word a day longer than it profited him. This is More's
way of striking a blow at the prevailing MachiavelUanism of the
time. " We know," he says ironically, " how religiously treaties are
observed in Europe, more particularly where the Christian doctrine
is received, which is partly owing to the justice and goodness of the
princes themselves, and partly to the reverence they pay to the
Popes, who, as they are most religious observers of their o-wn
promises, so they exhort all other princes to perform theirs " — all
of which was, as we know, the exact contrary of the actual
fact. There is, unfortunately, no book yet printed which deals thor
oughly -with the difficulties of the ' Utopia,' and possibly it may be
useful, for those who intend to read it for themselves, to give one
or two hints as to its interpretation. In the first place, then, we
must remember that the glaring absurdities and occasional puer-
iUties which it contains are purposely thrown in to give it the air
of a romance, and to conceal its serious aims. Secondly, irony
and satire predominate throughout, and sometimes More attributes
to the Utopians bad and immoral customs actually prevailing in
Europe. Dull readers say, how shocking! But More's latent
argument is : these things are bad in these benighted pagans of
Utopia; how much more to be condemned, then, amongst the
Christians of Europe ! Thirdly, the one deadly heresy about the
¦' Utopia,' the one absolute misunderstanding of it, is this : to
believe that More was not in earnest — that his book has no real,
serious meaning. We may recall, in this particular, some weighty
words of Ruskin. "The entire purpose of a great thinker," he
warns us in one of his books, " may be difficult to fathom, and we

64 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
may be over and over again more or less mistaken in guessing at
his meaning ; but the real, profound, nay, quite bottomless and
unredeemable mistake, is the fool's thought: that he had no-
meaning." It would be impossible to describe accurately the institutions of'
More's ideal State in fewer words than he has used himself, but
roughly the main ideas of the Utopian Commonwealth are these..
It is based on Communism, — not the Communism of Plato, but
of the early Christian Church. Dean Hook held the strange and
impossible view that the ' Utopia ' was meant to be a satire
against Communism ; but there cannot be the least doubt that,
in the abstract, as an ideal. More believed in Communism, and
looked back longingly to the golden age of Christianity, when
not one of the beUevers " said that aught of the things which he
possessed was his o-wn , but they had all things common." Com-^
munism in our time has a bad name, but it was realized con
stantly on a small scale in the monasteries of the Middle Ages,,
and flourishes to-day iu several societies of the United States.
There are even some amongst our great scholars and thinkers of
the present age who, Uke the Fathers, Ambrose and Chrysostom,
beUeve that the dream of Christian Communism -will yet be con
verted into deed. " When modem individualism," says Renan,
" has borne its last fruits ; when humanity, dwarfed, dismal, shall
return to great institutions and their strong discipline : when our
paltry, shopkeeping society — I say rather when our world of
pigmies — shall have been driven out with scourges by the heroic
and idealistic portions of humanity, then life in common will be
realized again."
The objection, of course, the valid objection to Communism, is
that it pre-supposes the death of human selfishness. More saw
this clearly, and warns us that Communism is an institution of an
ideal society. " There are many things in the Commonwealth of
Utopia, that I rather wish than hope to see followed in our govern
ments. All things -will not be well tUl all men are good, which
will not be these many years." Nevertheless, he does not scruple
to declare as an abstract doctrine, in the words of his traveler
Raphael, " I am persuaded, that till property is taken away, there

SIR THOMAS MORE. 65
can be no equitable or just distribution of things, nor can the
world be happily governed ; for as long as that is maintained, the
greatest and the far best part of mankind will be still oppressed
with a load of cares and anxieties. I confess, without taking it
quite away, those pressures that Ue on a great part of mankind
may be made lighter ; but they can never be quite removed."
Decidedly, I am afraid, whether we like it or not, we must believe
that Sir Thomas More, in his abstract opinions, as also in his
daily life, had strong leanings towards Communism.
The leading principle in the ' Utopia ' may be taken to be this.
It is a commonwealth in whieh the interests ofthe whole people are
considered to he the first and only ride of the State. There are no
leisured classes. All persons, even the magistrates themselves,
and not omitting the women, labour with their hands. But the
day's work is hmited, not as Mr. Green has it in his History, to
nine hours a day, but to six. It is objected to More that six
hours labour per day would not produce sufficient to support the
needs of humanity. It would be ample, he replied, if first of all,
men would limit themselves to necessaries of existence and give
up useless luxuries, and secondly, if there were no lazy people liv
ing on the labour of others. He then enumerates a list of the idle
classes, which must be painful reading to some of us. "First."
he says, " women generally do little, who are the half of mankind ;
and if some few women are diligent, their husbands are idle.
Then consider the great company of idle priests, and of those that
are called reUgious men ; add to those, all rich men, chiefiy those
that have estates in land, who are called noblemen and gentlemen,
together -with their famiUes, i. e., servants, made up of idle persons,
that are kept more for show than use."
In very many ways, apart from Communistic dreams, one is
obliged to admit the ' Utopia ' presents an attractive picture, very
largely because in so many matters it embodies the ideals which
More carried out in his own life. Education is universal, free to
all, and continued through life. Books and reading constitute
one of the chief pleasures of the whole community. Asceticism
is rejected, and the Utopians believe that all pure and honest
' pleasures are meant by God to be'enjoyed. Labour is prevetted 5

66 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
from becoming monotonous by a constant change of occupation
from craftsmanship to agriculture, from life in the country to
life in the town. The greatest reverence is paid by the young to
the old, the sick and suffering are diligently provided for, health
is regarded as the highest earthly good, and ensured by careful
measures of sanitation, and an attempt is made, in religious
matters, to combine pubUc worship in rites agreeable to all, with
perfect liberty of conscience, and freedom to use in private any
form of worship.
It was only with great difficulty that such a man as the author
of the ' Utopia ' was at last persuaded by Henry VIII. to enter
his service. More hated Court life, and loved simplicity, but the
Oxford Reformers had hope that the young and generous king
would aid in their plans of good government in Church and State.
There were no limits to Henry's admiration for More. Like every
one else who knew him, he f.-ll an easy victim to the charms of
that fascinating personality. In spite of himself. More was drawn
to the Court to give advice to Henry on state business, to talk on
scholarship, astronomy, and theology, to keep the king and queen
and courtiers in continuous laughter by his gaiety and wit. He
loathed it all the time, and longed for his Chelsea home, his books,
and his children. " He tried," says Erasmus, " as hard to keep
out of court as most men do to get into it.'' It is notable that in
order to escape from the company of kings and queens he had at
last to suppress his -wit and become like other folk. " When he
perceived," says his biographer, " that he could not once in a
month get leave to go home to his wife and children, he, much
misUking this restraint of Uberty, began thereupon somewhat to
dissemble his nature, and so by httle and little from his fornier mirth
to disuse himself, that he was of them from thenceforth no more so
ordinarily sent for." The king visited him at his house at Chelsea,
nevertheless, heaped honours and offices upon him, making him
TreEisurer of the Exchequer and Chancellor of the Duchy of
Lancaster, and not hesitating to astonish More's household by
walking for an hour in the garden with his arm round his sub
ject's neck. William Roper congratulated his father-in-law upon
his great good fortune. But More was under no delusions, and

SIR THOMAS MORE. 67
had already gauged the character of the king. " Son Roper," he
said gravely, " I have no cause to be proud hereof For if my
head would win his Highness a castle in France, it should not fail
to go off."
In 1523, the King and Wolsey contrived to have More made
Speaker of the House of Commons. It was a critical time, and
there were heavy subsidies to be demanded from ParUament.
Once again, however, he was found in opposition to the Tudor
monarchy, and, so far from aiding Wolsey, led the House of
Commons to victory. In vain Wolsey broke out wrathfuUy,
" Would to God, Master More, you had been at Rome when I
made you speaker! " "Your grace not offended," answered Sir
Thomas cooUy, " so would I too, my lord." He was an opponent
whom no taunts nor insults could sting into retaliation. Differing
at the Council table on one occasion from Wolsey on some
question of foreign policy, the Cardinal called More " the veriest
fool in aU the King's Council." " God be thanked," answered
More, with quiet irony but no trace of anger, " that his Majesty
hath only one fool in his Council."
There has come down to us a picture of the home life of More
at this time, which is valuable both for what it tells us, and as a
piece of Uterature from a master hand. It is found in one of the
epistles of Erasmus. " More has built," he says, " near London,
upon the Thames, a modest yet commodious mansion. There he
lives surrounded by his family, including his -wife, his son and his
son's -vrife, his three daughters and their husbands, and eleven
grand-children. There is not any man Uving so affectionate as
he ; and he loveth his old wife as if she were a girl of fifteen. In
More's house, you would say that Plato's Academy was revived
again, only whereas in the Academy the discussions turned upon
geometry and the power of numbers, the house at Chelsea is a
veritable school of Christian religion. In it is none, man or
woman, but readeth or studieth the Uberal arts, yet is their chief
care of piety. There is never any seen idle. The head of the house
governs it not by a lofty carriage and oft rebukes, but by gentle
ness and amiable manners. Every member is busy in his place,
performing his duty with alacrity, nor is sober mirth wanting."

68 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
In 1529, on Wolsey's fall. More, much against his will, became
Lord Chancellor of England. It was not long, however, before he
found that there was the widest possible divergence of views
between Henry and himself upon the all-important subject of the
day, the divorce from Catherine of Arragon. In this matter the
King had hoped to have the support of More's great authority
upon his side, and was bitterly disappointed at the attitude of his
Chancellor,, who firmly declined in any shape or form to
countenance the divorce. More had two reasons. He believed it
to be a gross injustice in itself, and furthermore he distrusted the
Protestant reformers, and would lend no aid to the destruction of
the Papal supremacy. With the King's consent he laid down his
office and went into retirement. He had entered Henry's service
a rich man : he left it -without rewards of any kind, with an
income of £100 a year. The clergy, out of gratitude for the fierce
and violent books which More had written against the Protestants
of England and Germany, voted him a grant of £5,000. He
declined it, saying that he would rather see it all cast into the
Thames. He wanted neither riches nor honours, only rest and
peace. The crisis of Sir Thomas More's life arrived when in the year
1533, Henry VIIL, impatient of long years of delay in lawsuits
and Papal negotiations, cut the Gordian knot by marrying Anne
Boleyn, and in the teeth of all Europe proclaiming her as la-wful
Queen of England. On January 25, Anne Boleyn gained the
object of her selfish ambition, and was secretly married to the
King. On the 23d of May, Thomas Cranmer, but lately created
Archbishop of Canterbury, with that ignoble subservience to his
sovereign which was the worst stain on his character, pronounced
sentence of divorce against Queen Catherine, and a week later
her rival was crowned at Westminster with magnificent pomp and
pageantry, such as England had never witnessed before. An
in-vitation to be present had been sent to the ex-Lord ChanceUor,
together with a present of £20 to buy him a Court dress, he being
now reduced to poverty. More firmly refused, and thereby signed
his own death-warrant, as he knew. Henceforth he was a marked
and doomed man. The minister who now ruled both England

SIR THOMAS MORE. 69
and Henry with a , rod of iron was Thomas Cromwell, stUl the
unsolved riddle of Tudor history : a man of kindly temperament
in private life, but in government the Archfiend of Tyranny, a
faithful disciple of MachiavelU, cool, passionless, indomitable,
bent upon building up in England an absolute monarchy, and upon
making his sovereigns supreme in Church and State. It was -with
an unerring instinct that the King and minister perceived that
the most formidable foe they had in England in their absolutist
designs was Sir Thomas More. Quietly and cahnly, he had with
drawn himself from their plans, but that was not enough. In
every country of Europe his name was famous. In England he
was respected and reverenced universally, and even his silent
opposition was dangerous to the government. Cromwell in singUng
out the victims of his policy invariably pursued the same method :
he let the weak and the inconsiderable and the mean go free, and
struck at the greatest and the noblest, the leaders of men. So it
happened that one of the first sufferers under the English Reign
of Terror was Sir Thomas More.
I will not weary you by tracing out the various devices which
were used to betray the noblest of Englishmen to his death. One
or two examples must suffice. His enemies were foolish enough
in their malice to charge the purest judge the nation had possessed
for two centuries -with recei-ving bribes and presents from suitors
in his court. An inquiry was held, and every accusation was
triumphantly refuted. It was proved beyond doubt that, after
the evil custom of the time, persons who had gained favourable
verdicts at his hand, had presented him with valuable gifts. It
was also proved that Sir Thomas More, unUke his fellow-judges,
had returned them every one. Next, an unsuccessful endeavour
was made to impUcate him in the treasonable speeches of the
Romanist prophetess, EUzabeth Barton, the Nun of Kent.
ParUament passed an Act of Attainder against her, and the King
had determined that More should be included as one of her
accompUces ; but the charge was so false and monstrous, that his
o-wn ministers on their knees persuaded him to omit More's name,
assuring him that the House of Lords would never find him
guilty. Threats and persuasions alike were tried with the late

70 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
Chancellor, but all m vain. Ahnost alone in that immoral age.
More allowed himself the luxury of a conscience, and he was
steadfastly resolved never at the bidding of a tyrant king to declare
that to be right which he knew to be wrong. He looked death in
the face and calmly made his decision, smiUng when the Duke of
Norfolk, alarmed at his danger, gave him a friendly hint. " By
the mass, Mr. More," the Duke had said, "it is perilous stri-ving
with Princes, and therefore I would wish you to incUne to the
King's pleasure. The anger of a pionarch means death." " Is
that all, my lord ? " More replied ; "then there is no more differ
ence between your grace and me but that I shall die to-day and
you to-morrow.'' The resources of tyranny, however, were not
exhausted, and CromweU had more dangerous weapons to use than
these. In 1534 there was passed an Act of Succession, excluding
the Princess Mary from the throne, declaring Anne Boleyn Queen,
and settling the crown upon her children. In itself that statute
was powerless to hurt More, who acluiowledged fuUy, as a loyal
EngUshman, the right of Parliament to determine the succession.
But by another pro-vision of the same statute, manifestly aimed at
More and those who believed as he did, the King was empowered
to administer to any subject in the realm an oath which declared
his marriage -with Catherine of Arragon to have been against
Scripture and invaUd from the beginning. It was well known
that More could-take no such oath. But on April 13, 1534, while
at Chelsea, he was summoned by Cranmer to appear at Lambeth
and receive it. There was a sharp, short struggle. More was no
ambitious candidate for the honours of martyrdom, and there were
reasons enough, in his sweet home Ufe at Chelsea, amidst his
chUdren and grandchildren, his books and his friends, with
Margaret Roper, the true and perfect ideal of English woman
hood, ever at his side, and the great Erasmus and half the learned
men of Europe for his intellectual companions — reasons enough,
surely, to make him hesitate. Why should he not do what
bishops and nobles had not disdained to do, and earn peace and
rest by going through a mere form of words? The King,
he knew, would prevail in the end. Why should he maintain,
singlehanded, a hopeless opposition ? No such pleadings had any

SIR THOMAS MORE. 71
weight with More. " Never," said Erasmus, " did Nature mould
a temper more gentle, endearing, and happy than the temper of
Thomas More." It was true, but it was also true that never
since the days when King Alfred the Truth-teller reigned in Eng
land, had there been an Englishman endowed with a stronger will
and more indomitable spirit. Beneath all his laughter and gaiety,
there lurked an iron determination and the courage of a martyr.
The struggle -vrithin him was soon over, and in the end Ufe and
love and happiness seemed less precious than honour and duty
and a manful struggle against unlawful tyranny. Let me read to
you William Roper's touching account of this mental conflict. He
was with him at Chelsea when the summons came. " Whereas,"
he says, " Sir Thomas More used evermore at his departure from
his house and children (whom he loved tenderly) to have them
bring him to his boat, and there to kiss them all and bid them
farewell, at this time would he suffer none of them forth of the
gate to foUow him, but pulled the -wicket after him, and shut them
all from him, and -with a heavy heart (as by his countenance it
appeared) with me and our four servants then took his boat
towards Lambeth. Wherein sitting still sadly awhile, at the
last he rounded me in the ear and said, ' Son Roper, I thank our
Lord, the field is won.' "
At Lambeth More remained resolute. He would obey the laws,
he said, and acknowledge the succession, but he could not perjure
himself by taking the oath, which contained matter that he did not
believe. In vain Cranmer pUed him with arguments and subtle
distinctions. He finally decUned to obey, and was committed to
the Tower.
There he remained for a whole year in harsh and severe impris
onment, surrounded by spies, who endeavoured to entrap him in
treasonable words, troubled somewhat by the complaints and
commonplace pleadings of his worldly -wife. Dame Alice. She
" marvelled," she said, " that he who had always hitherto been
taken for so -wise a man, should now so play ihe fool as to lie in a
close, filthy prison, when he might be abroad at his liberty, in
favour with King and Council, if he would but do as aU the Bishops
and best learned of the realm had done." There was one.

72 - THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
however, whose pure nature and lofty soul could understand that a
noble man might value his Ufe less than a conscience free from
blame ; and amid his long, weary imprisonment. More was con
stantly cheered and encouraged in his resolution by her who would
gladly have laid down her life for his, his daughter Margaret.
At last, m May, 1535, he was placed on his trial at Westminster,
charged -with new treasons in ha-ving denied the King's title as
Supreme Head of the Church. New weapons for the removal of
opponents had now been placed in the hands of the King and
Cromwell. Not only had Henry been declared Head of the
Church, but ParUament had passed an outrageous law inflicting
all the penalties of high treason upon any person who should deny
any of his titles, and the lawyers had twisted this to mean that
positive guilt need not be proved. If a man refused to answer
official questions concerning his belief about the Supremacy, that
was sufficient. Even Mr. Froude, who is not particular about
strong measures, apologizes for this infamous statute, and admits
that it bordered upon oppression. I dwell upon it because it is
important to notice exactly what it was that More declined to do
and for what cause he was put to death. It is usually said that he
was executed because he denied the King's Supremacy. It would
be more accurate to say that he died because he refused to answer
questions as to his private belief on the matter. He scrupulously
avoided writing or speaking against the Act of Supremacy. He
was put to death for keeping silence.
The details of his trial need not concern us. It was, perhaps,
the worst of the judicial murders of Henry's reign. The result
was a foregone conclusion. The prosecutors for the Cro-wn were
themselves the -witnesses. The only shred of evidence against
More was given by Solicitor-General Rich, a man of bad life
and character. The jury, notwithstanding, after fifteen minutes
dehberation, found More guilty, and he was condemned to death.
Lord Chancellor Audley intimating that the King, out of his
gracious favour to him, had been pleased to change the usual
punishment for treason to beheading. "God forbid," said More,
with the -wit that never failed him, " that the King should shew
any more such mercy unto any of my friends ; and God preserve

SIR THOMAS MORE. 73
my posterity from all such pardons." No words of bittemess or
condemnation against the men who had just consigned him to
death escaped him, and with a smile he took farewell of his
judges. " My lords," he said, " I verily trust that though your
lordships have been on earth judges to my condemnation, we
may yet hereafter in heaven meet merrily together to our ever
lasting salvation. God preserve you all, especially my sovereign
lord the King, and send him faithful councillors."
A harder trial awaited him. As he landed at the Tower Wharf,
his daughter Margaret, who had watched for him there to take her
last farewell, -without care for herself thrust aside the weapons of
the guards and fell at her father's feet asking his blessing. " The
beholding whereof," says Roper, " was to many of them that were
present thereat so lamentable, that it made them for very sorrow
to mourn and to weep." For More, when his daughter at last
was constrained to leave him, the bitterness of death was past.
A week later they led him forth to die. The imprisonment in
the Tower had done its work. His hair was now sprinkled -with
grey, liis body emaciated, and it]was with difficulty that he walked
to the place of execution. No physical weakness, however, could
bend his lofty spirit nor mar the splendid courage -with which he
met his death. Historians have wondered at the extraordinary
composure which he displayed, and some have censured his levity.
The truth is that to no EngUshman who ever Uved did the change
from Ufe to death seem so sUght as to Sir Thomas More. " His
death," it has been well said by Addison, " was of a piece with his
Ufe. There was nothing in it new, forced, or affected. The
innocent mirth which had been so conspicuous in his life did not
forsake him to the last."
As he placed his foot upon the ladder, the scaffold, which had
been badly put together, shook and seemed Ukely to fall. More
turned with a smile to his friend. Sir WilUam Kingston, the
Lieutenant of the Tower. " Master Lieutenant," he said, perhaps
with a kindly intention to cheer his friend, " I pray you see me
safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself." The
executioner begged his forgiveness. " Thou art about to do me,"
said More, " a greater service this day than ever any mortal man

74 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
can give me." Then, having declared to the people that he died
in the faith of the Holy CathoUc Church and a faithful servant to
God and the king, he repeated the Miserere Psalm, and binding a
cloth over his eyes, knelt at the block. The headsman was about
to strike, when More signed to him to delay while he removed his
beard. " Pity," he murmured, not in levity but saddest irony,
" pity that should be cut which never committed treason."
" With which strange words," writes Mr. Froude, compelled for
once to be generous, " the strangest perhaps ever uttered at such
a time, the lips most famous through Europe for eloquence and
wisdom closed forever  Something of his calmness may
have been due to his natural temperament, something to an
unaffected weariness of a world which in his eyes was plunging
into the ruin of the latter days. But those fair hues of sunny
cheerfulness caught their colour from the simpUcity of his faith ;
and never was there a Christian's -victory over death more grandly
evidenced than in that last scene lighted -with its lambent
humour." Beautiful, surely, this Ufe. Beautifiil, this joyous death. But
it is not for those things only that I have ventured to commend
Sir Thomas More's history to your notice. It is this noble book
of his, this ' Utopia,' deserving, if ever volume did, John MUton's
description of a good book, " the precious Ufe-blood of a master
spirit, embalmed and treasured up to a Ufe beyond life," which
constitutes in this age More's chief claim to our regard. We Uve
in a time when humanity is throbbing with new ideals and new
aspirations, when especially one fresh hope animates the world,
that in the near future the hard lot of the suffering, patient
milUons who bear the burden of the earth's toil shall be amelio
rated. We are not worthy to Uve in our generation — I dare to
say it — if we haye no share in this hope. We are no true stu
dents of the Extension movement if in some degree we do not
share the enthusiasm and the spirit of Sir Thomas More. This
movement of ours — let us openly proclaim what many of you have
discovered already — is in its essence a movement for Social
Reform. That does not mean that it need create apprehension in
the mind of any one. We are no Revolutionists. We have no

SIR THOMAS MORE. 75
party poUtics to propagate. There are no valued institutions of
our country which we wish to assail. We give allegiance to no
Socialism except the Socialism of Jesus Christ. We do not beUeve
that Christianity is an exploded myth. Our methods in their
degree are the methods of the Oxford Reformers — of Colet and
Erasmus and More. What we care about mainly is that the best
gifts of God shaU be scattered broadcast amongst the people ; that
culture and knowledge and exalted ideals shall spread from the
few to the many ; that " no man shall die ignorant to whom God
has given the capacity for knowledge ; " that the great cities shall
not long continue the scandal and the shame aUke of our ReUgion
and our Humanity.
" Oh ! why, and for what, are we waiting, while our brothers droop
and die,
And on every wind of the heavens a wasted life goes by f
How long shall they reproaxih us, where crowd on crowd they
dwell.
Poor ghosts of the wiehed dty, the gold-crushed, hungry hell !
They are gone ! There is none can undo it, nor save our souls
from, the curse ;
But many a million cometh, and shall they he better, or worae f "

B^otes attd 31Iltt»h*atiott$«

(a) — Contemporaries of the Oxford Reformers (1466^1536).

Richard III. .
Henry VIII. .
Francis I. . .
Charles V. .
Alexander -VI.
LeoX. . . .
Columbus . .
Copernicus .
Gutenberg . .
Caxton . . .

. 1452— 1485.
. 1491— 1547.
. 1494— 1547.
. 1500—1558.
• 1431—1503.
• 1475—1523-
- 1435—1506.
¦ 1473— 1543-
. 141 o — 1468.
. 1422 — 1491.

Savonarola  145^ — 1498
Michael Angelo . . . 1475 — 1564
Raphael  1483 — 1520
Machiavelli  I469 — 1527,
Pico della Mirandola . 1463 — 1494
Rabelais  1495— '553
Luther  1483 — 1546,
Zwingle  1484 — 1531
Tyndale  1484— 1536,
Loyola  1491 — 1556

(*) — Historical Events during Colet's Lifetime.
Battle of Te-wkesbury  1471.
Death of Charles the Bold . ;  1477-
Battle of Bosworth  1485.
Spaniards enter Grenada  1492.
Columbus discovers S. Salvador  1492.
Charles -VIII. invades Italy  1494.
Cabot discovers coast of North America . . . .1497.
Execution of Savonarola  1498.
Leo X. becomes Pope  1513-
Luther writes his -Wittenberg theses  ISI7-
(<:) — The Revival of Learning in England.
" It is never among the people who give birth to new ideas that those ideas
attain to their healthiest development. The new thought takes possession of
them too exclusively, and quickens one side of their nature into too one-sided
a life. So it had been in the early Middle Ages with the monasticism of the
East. So it was when the Middle A^es drew to a close with the Humanism
of Italy. What Benedict of Nursia was to Simeon Stylites, Colet and More

THE OXFORD REFORMERS. 77
were to Pulci and Machiavelli. The Italians had before them the lees of
Mediaeval Christianity in their foulest corruption. Their reverence for
humanity grew to be mere pampering of the intellect or of the senses. In
England, as the evil was less intense, the reaction was less intense also. The
old Church life lived on in the words of Colet, interpenetrated with a new
spirit of inquiry and a new longing for a reign of justice rather than for self-
mortification." S. R. Gardiner.
id) — Colet's Programme for Reform in the Church.
" Let those lawes be rehersed that do warne you fathers that ye put not
over soone your hands on every man, or admitte into holy orders. . . . Let
the lawes be rehersed that commande that benefices of the church be gyven to
those that are worthy ; and that promotions be made in the churche by the
ryghte balance of vertue, not by carnall affection : whereby this happeneth
nowe-a days that boyes for olde men, fooles for wise men, euyll for good,
do reigne and rule. . . . Let the lawes be rehersed that warreth against
the spot of Symonie . . . that commande personall residence of curates
in theyre churches . . . that command that the goodes of the church be
spent, nat in costly byldyng, nat in sumptuous apparrell and pompis, nat in
feastyng and bankettynge, nat in excesse and wantonnes, nat in enrichinge
of kynsfolke, nat in kepynge of dogges, but in things profitable ahd necessary
to the churche . . . Let the lawes be rehersed of the residence of bysshops
in theyr diocesis ; that commande that they loke diligently, and take hede to
the helthe of soules ; that they shew themselves in their churches at the leest
on greatte holye-dayes ; that they here the causes and matters of poure men ;
that they sustein fatherles children and widowes; that they exercise them
selfe in workes of virtue." Convocation Sermon of 1512.
{e) — Colet and S. Paul's School.
" I pray God all may be to his honour, and to the erudicyon and profyt
of chyldren my countrie-men, Londoners specyally, whome dygestynge this
¦ lytel werke I had alwaye before mine eyen, consyderinge more what was for
them than to shewe any grete connynge, wyllyng to speke the thynges often
before spoken in.suche maner as gladly yonge begynners and tender wittes
myght take and conceyue. Wherefore I pray you, al lytel babys, al lytel
children, lerne gladly this lytel treatise, and commende it dylygently vnto
your memoryes. Trustynge of this begynninge that ye shal procede and
growe to parfyt lyterature, and come at last to be gret clarkes. And lyfte vp
your lytel whyte hands for me, which prayeth for you to God. To whom
be al honour and imperyal maieste and glory. Amen."
¦ A lytell proheme to the boke ' (Colet's Accidence.)

78 THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
{/) — The Chief Works of Erasmus.
Enchiridion Militis Christiani . 1503. Adagia  1500 — 1520.
Praise of Folly  1510. Institutio Principis Christiani . .1516.
Novum Instrumentum . . . .1516. Paraphraseof the New Testament 15 19.
Treatise on Free- Will . . .1524. Familiar Colloquies . . .1519—1530.
" Desiderius Erasmus. Auctor damnatus. Opera omnia Erasmi caute
legenda, tam multa enim insunt correctione digna ut vix omnia expurgari
possint." ' Index Expurgatorius.'
(g) — Erasmus on War.
" Oh ! that God would be merciful and still this storm which is raging
in the Christian world. We are worse than the dumb animals, for among
them it is only the -wild beasts that wage war, and that with the weapons
with which nature has furnished them; not as we do with machines invented
by the art of the devil. Can we who glory in the name of Christ, whose
precepts and example taught us only gentleness, think anything in this world
of such value that it should provoke us to war ? — a thing so ruinous, so
hateful, that even when it is most just, no truly good man can approve of
it, carried oh as it is by homicides, gamblers, scoundrels of every kind,
by the lowest class of hirelings, who care more for a little gain than tor
their lives.'' Ep. to Anthony k Bergis, 1 5 14.
(A) — His Attack on Regal Tyranny.
" Princes should be chosen, not taken at random, as they are now : the
result being that the people build cities, princes destroy them; the industry
of citizens enriches the state, which the princes' rapacity plunders ; popular
magistrates enact good laws for kings to break ; the people love peace, and
their rulers stir up war." 'Adagia.'
(»¦) — His Theory of the Papacy.
" The Roman Pontiff is the chief herald of the Gospel, as other bishops
are his heralds. All bishops are vicegerents of Christ, but among them the
Roman Pontiff is pre-eminent. But they are his worst enemies who ascribe
to him, in order to flatter him, an authority which he himself does not claim,
and which it is not for the advantage of the Christian flock that he should
possess.'' Ep. to Archbishop of Maintz, 15 19.
iJ) — His Hatred of Dogma.
" Let us have done with theological refinements. A man is not lost
because he cannot tell whether the Spirit has one principle or two. Has he
the fruits of the Spirit? That is the question. Is he patient, kind, good,
gentle, modest, temperate, chaste ? Inquire if you will, but do not define.
True religion is peace, and we cannot have peace unless we leave the
conscience unshackled on obscure points on which certainty is impossible."
Ep. to Arch, of Palermo, 1523.

THE OXFORD REFORMERS. 79
(.H) — His Relations to Luther and the Reformation.
" I neither approve Luther nor condemn him. If he is innocent, he
ought not to be oppressed by the factions of the wicked ; if he is in error,
he should be answered, not destroyed. The theologians do not try to answer
him. They do but raise an insane and senseless clamour, and shriek and
curse." Ep. to the Prince Elector Albert, 1519.
"As to your advice that I should join Luther, there will be no difficulty
about that, should I find him on the side of the Catholic Church. But if
matters shall come to extremities, and a revolution take place, by which
the Church shall be made to totter on her throne, I will in the meantime
anchor myself to that solid rock until it shall become clear on the restoration
of peace where the Church is, and wherever there is evangelical peace there
will Erasmus be found." Letter of 1521.
" I am ready to be a martyr for Christ, if He give me strength to do so ;
but I have no wish to be a martyr for Luther." Ep. to Ulric von Hutten, 1523.
" My aim is the advancement of literature, and a pure simple theology.
I ask not whether Luther approve or not ; Luther and this generation shall
pass away, but Christ abideth for ever." Answer to Hutten, 1523,
(/)— :Erasmus' Estimate of More.
" If you want a perfect pattern of real friendship, you must look for it
in More. He has so much affability, and suavity of manner, that there is no
one, however morose may be his disposition, whom he does not make
cheeirful. . . There is nothing iri the world, however serious it may be,
from which he does not extract pleasantry. If he has intercourse with wise
and learned men, he is delighted with their genius ; if with unlearned and
foolish men, he enjoys their folly. . . No one is less swayed by the
opinions of the world, and no one is more remarkable for common sense.
. . From early life he has loved the pursuit of letters. . . He is alto
gether without pride, and in the midst of weighty affairs of State he remem
bers his old friends, and returns to his beloved literature. . . John Colet,
a man of shrewdness and accurate judgment, says of him in conversation,
that there is but one genius in England, and that his name is Thomas More.
He is a man of real piety, very remote from all superstition. He converses
in such a manner with his friends respecting the world to come, that you see
at once that he has a hope full of immortahty." Letter to Ulric von Hutten, 15 19.
{ni) — More's Attack on the Social Conditions of his Time.
" Is not this an vniust and an unkynde publyke weale, whyche gyueth
great fees and rewardes to gentlemen, as they call them, and to gold smythes.

8o THE OXFORD REFORMERS.
and to suche other, whiche be either ydle persones, or els onlye flatterers,
and deuysers of vain pleasures : And of the contrary parte maketh no gentle
prouision for poore ploumen, collars, laborers, carters, yronsmythes, and
carpenters : without whome no commen wealthe can contineue ? But after it
hath abused the labours of theire lusty and glowing age, at the laste when
they be oppressed with olde age and sickenes : being nedye, poore, and
indigent of all things, then forgetting theire so manye and so greate benefits
recompenseth and acquyteth them moste vnkyndly with miserable death.
And yet besides this the riche men not only by private fraud, but also by
commen lawes, do euery day pluck and snatche awaye from the poor some
part of their daily lining. . . Therefore when I consider and way in my
mind all these commen wealthes, which now a dayes any where do flourish,
so God heipe me, I can perceaue nothing but a certein conspiracy of riche
men procuringe their owne commodities vnder the name and title of the
common wealth." ' Utopia.'
(k) — Satire of the ' Utopia.'
" In Utopia all the priests are of exceeding holiness, and therefore their
number is but few."
" Furthermore, they utterly exclude and banish all attorneys, proctors,
and sergeants at the law, which craftily handle matters and subtilly dispute
of the laws. For they think it most meet that every man should plead his
own matter, and tell the same tale before the judge that he would tell to his
man of law."
" Princely virtue, which like as it is of much higher majesty than poor
folks' virtue, so also it is of much more liberty, as to the which nothing is
unlawful that it lusteth after."
" They gather pearls by the seaside, and diamonds and carbuncles upon
certain rocks, and with these they deck theh young infants, which when they
be grown in years do lay them by, perceiving that none but children do wear
such toys and trifles.''
"They count hunting the lowest, the vilest, and most abject part of
butchery, and the other parts of it more profitable, and most honest, as
bringing much more commodity, in that they kill beasts only for necessity."
" They hire soldiers from all places, but chiefly from the Zapoletje (Swiss),
a hardy race, born only for war, ready to serve any prince that will hire
thera, in great numbers. They know none of the arts of life except how to
take it away. They serve their employers actively and faithfully . . .but
they will change sides for the advance of a halfpenny. As the Utopians
look out for good men for their own use at home, they employ the greatest
scoundrels abroad -. and they think they do a great service to mankind by thus
ridding the world of the entire scum of such a foul and nefarious population."
' Utopia,' Book II.

THE OXFORD REFORMERS. 8i
(o) — Doctrines of Religious Toleration in the ' Utopia.'
" This is one of the ancientest laws among them : that no man shall be
blamed for reasoning in the maintenance of his own religion. For King
Utopus, even at the first beginning, hearing that the inhabitants of the land
were, before his coming thither, at continual dissension and strife among
themselves for their religions : first of all, made a decree that it shoiild be
lawful for every man to favour and follow what religion he would, and that
he might do the best he could to bring others to his opinion, so that he did
it peaceably, gently, quietly, and soberly, without hasty and contentious
rebuking and inveighing against other. If he could not by fair and gentle
speech induce them into his opinion, yet he should use no kind of violence,
and refrain from displeasant and seditious words. . . . Therefore he gave to
every man free liberty and choice to believe what he would, saving that he
earnestly charged them that no man should conceive so vile and base an
opinion of the dignity of man's nature, as to think that the souls do die and
perish with the bodies. . . He that is thus minded is deprived of all
honours, excluded from all common administrations in the weal public. .
Howbeit they put hira to no punishment, because they be persuaded, that it
is no man's power to believe what he list."

Books.

(a) — Text Books.
i. F. Seebohm's Oxford Reformers. (Longmans.)
ii. " Era of the Protestant Revolution. (I^ngmans.)
iii. Green's Short History of the English People. (Macmillan.)
iv. More's Utopia, edited by J. R. Lumby. (Cambridge Press.)
V. Life of Erasmus, by Rev. A. R. Pennington. (Seeley.)
(b) — Biographies. i. Life of John Colet, by Rev. J. H. Lupton. (Bell & Sons.)
Lives of Vitrarius and Colet, by Erasmus, edited by Lupton.
Life, by Dr. S. Knight, (Oxford, 1823.)
ii. Life and Character of Erasmus, by R. B. Drummond. 2 vols. 1873.
Jortin's Life of Erasmus. '' vols. 1758.
iii. Roper's Life of More (included in Lumby's edition of the Utopia).
Cresacre More's Life of More. 1627.
Stapleton's Tres Thomse. 1588.
Life by Sir James Macintosh. 1844.
Life by Father Bridgett, S. J., 1891.
((-) — Essays. i. Articles on More and Erasmus m Encycloposdia Britannica, by
M. Pattison.
ii. Essay on Erasmus, by Milman .
iii. Times of Erasmus and Luther, by J. A. Froude. (Short Studies.
Vol. I).
iv. Erasmus. Oxford Prize Essay, by A. L. Smith.
(d) — Works.
i. Colet's lectures have been edited by Mr. Lupton.
The Convocation sermon is printed in Blunt's History of the
Reformation, Vol. I.

THE OXFORD REFORMERS. 83
ii. Works of Erasmus, edited by Le Clerc. 10 vols. 1703.
The ' Praise of Folly,' and the ' Colloquies ' can be read in English
translations.
The most important of the Epistles of Erasmus are translated in
Drummonri's Life.
iii. More's Collected Works. 1689.
Utopia. Best reprint is Arber's. 1869.
ie) — Histories and Books of Reference.
i. Brewer's Reign of Henry VIII. 2 vols. 1884.
ii. Fronde's History of England. Vols, i., 11.
iii. Dixon's History of the Reformation.
iv. Hibbert Lectures for 1883, by Dr. C. Beard.
V. Symonds' Renaissance in Italy.
vi. Lingard's History of England.
vii. Nisard. Etudes sur la Renaissance.
viii. Niccold Machiavelli and his Times. Pasquale Villari.
ix. Villari's Life of .Savonarola.
X. Kostlin's Life of Luther.

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