“Another thing that has caused many people to mislike religious has been the great extremity that has been many times witnessed at the elections of abbots, priors, and such other spiritual sovereigns. And this is a general ground, for when religious men perceive that people mislike them, they in their hearts withdraw their favour and devotion again from them. And in this way charity has waxed cold between them.”

“And verily, I suppose, that it were better that there should be no abbot or prior hereafter allowed to continue over a certain number of years, and that these should be appointed by the authority of the rulers, rather than have such extremities at elections, as in many places has been used in times past.

“And verily, it seems to me, one thing would do great good concerning religious Orders and all religious persons, and that is this: that the Rules and Constitutions of religious bodies should be examined and well considered, whether their rigour and straightness can be borne now in these days as they were at the beginning of the religious Orders. For people be nowadays weaker, as to the majority of men, than they were then. And if it is thought that they (i.e. the Rules) cannot now be kept, that then such relaxations and interpretations of their rules be made, as shall be thought expedient by the rulers. Better it is to have an easy rule well kept, than a strict rule broken without correction. For, thereof followeth a boldness to offend, a quiet heart in an evil conscience: a custom in sin, with many an ill example to the people. By this many have found fault at all religious life, where they should rather have found fault at divers abuses against the true religion. Certain it is that religious life was first ordained by the holy fathers by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, keep it who so may.”[136]

Much of this criticism on the state of the religious orders on the eve of the Reformation is obviously only very general, and would apply to all states of society, composed, as such bodies are, of human members. With much that Saint-German suggests, it is impossible not to agree in principle, however difficult the attainment of the ideal may be in practice. Sir Thomas More, whilst admitting that there were undoubtedly things requiring correction in the religious life of the period, maintains most strongly that in practical working it was far better than any one would gather from the assertions and suggestions of Saint-German, and that in reality, with all their carping at laxity and worldliness, none of the critics of the monks would be willing to change places with them. “As wealthy,” he writes, “and as easy and as glorious as some tell ‘the pacifier’ religious life is, yet if some other would say to them: ‘Lo sirs, those folks who are in religion shall out, come you into religion in their steads; live there better than they do, and you shall have heaven,’ they would answer, I fear me, that they are not weary of the world. And even if they were invited into religion another way, and it was said to them, ‘Sir, we will not bid you live so straight in religion as these men should have done; come on enter, and do just as they did, and then you will have a good, easy, and wealthy life, and much worldly praise for it,’—I ween for all that, a man would not get them to go into it. But as easy as we call it, and as wealthy too—and now peradventure when our wives are angry we wish ourselves therein—were it offered … I ween that for all our words, if that easy and wealthy life that is in religion were offered to us, even as weary as we are of wedding, we would rather bear all our pain abroad than take a religious man’s life of ease in the cloister.”[137]

With some of the accusations of Saint-German, or rather with some of his explanations of the supposed “grudge” borne by the laity to the clergy, More has hardly the patience to deal. They, the clergy, and above all religious, should, the former says, “give alms and wear hair (shirts), and fast and pray that this division may cease.” “Pray, wear hair, fast, and give alms,” says the latter; “why, what else do they do as a rule? Some may not; but then there were some negligent in those matters for the past thousand years, and so the present negligence of a few can’t be the cause of the dissension now.” “But this ‘pacifier,’ perceiving that what one man does in secret another cannot see, is therefore bold to say they do not do all those things he would have them do; that is to say, fast, pray, wear hair (shirts), and give alms. For he says ‘that they do all these things it appears not.’”

Now, “as to praying, it appears indeed that they do this; and that so much that they daily pray, as some of us lay men think it a pain (to do) once a week; to rise so soon from sleep and to wait so long fasting, as on a Sunday to come and hear out their matins. And yet the matins in every parish is neither begun so early nor so long in the saying as it is in the Charter house you know well; and yet at the sloth and gluttony of us, who are lay people, he can wink and fan himself asleep. But as soon as the lips of the clergy stop moving he quickly spies out that they are not praying.”

And “now as touching on alms: Is there none given, does he think, by the spirituality? If he say, as he does, that it does not appear that they do give alms, I might answer again that they but follow in this the counsel of Christ which says: ‘Let not the left hand see what thy right hand doeth.’… But as God, for all that counsel, was content that men should both pray and give to the needy and do other works both of penance and of charity openly and abroad, where there is no desire of vain glory, but that the people by the sight thereof might have occasion therefore to give laud and praise to God, so I dare say boldly that they, both secretly and openly too, … give no little alms in the year, whatsoever this ‘pacifier’ do say. And I somewhat marvel, since he goes so busily abroad that there is no ‘some say,’ almost in the whole realm, which he does not hear and repeat it; I marvel, I say, not a little that he neither sees nor hears from any ‘some say’ that there is almsgiving in the spirituality; I do not much myself go very far abroad, and yet I hear ‘some say’ that there is; and I myself see sometimes so many poor folk at Westminster at the doles, of whom, as far as I have ever heard, the monks are not wont to send many away unserved, that I have myself for the press of them been fain to ride another way.”

“But to this, some one once answered me and said; ‘that it was no thanks to them, for it (came from) lands that good princes have given them.’ But, as I then told him, it was then much less thanks to them that would now give good princes evil counsel to take it from them. And also if we are to call it not giving of alms by them, because other good men have given them the lands from which they give it, from what will you have them give alms? They have no other.…”

Further replying to the insinuation of Saint-German that the religious keep retainers and servants out of pride and for “proud worldly countenance,” Sir Thomas More says: “If men were as ready in regard to a deed of their own, by nature indifferent, to construe the mind and intent of the doer to the better part, as they are, of their own inward goodness, to construe and report it to the worst, then might I say, that the very thing which they call ‘the proud worldly countenance’ they might and should call charitable alms. That is to say, (when they furnish) the right honest keep and good bringing up of so many temporal men in their service, who though not beggars yet perhaps the greater part of them might have to beg if they did not support them but sent them out to look for some service for themselves,” (they are giving charitable alms).

“And just as if you would give a poor man some money because he was in need and yet would make him go and work for it in your garden, lest by your alms he should live idle and become a loiterer, the labour he does, does not take away the nature nor merit of alms: so neither is the keeping of servants no alms, though they may wait on the finder and serve him in his house. And of all alms the chief is, to see people well brought up and well and honestly guided. In which point, though neither part do fully their duty, yet I believe in good faith that in this matter, which is no small alms, the spirituality is rather somewhat before us than in any way drags behind.”[138]

With regard to the charge brought against the clergy of great laxity in fasting and mortification, More thinks this is really a point on which he justly can make merry. Fasting, he says, must be regulated according to custom and the circumstances of time and place. If there were to be a cast-iron rule for fasting, then, when compared with primitive times, people in his day, since they dined at noon, could not be held to fast at all. And yet “the Church to condescend to our infirmity” has allowed men “to say their evensong in Lent before noon,” in order that they might not break their fast before the vesper hour. The fact is that, in More’s opinion, a great deal of the outcry about the unmortified lives of the religious and clergy had “been made in Germany” by those who desired to throw off all such regulations for themselves. As a Teuton had said to him in “Almaine” colloquial English—“when I blamed him,” More says, “for not fasting on a certain day: ‘Fare to sould te laye men fasten? let te prester fasten.’ So we, God knows, begin to fast very little ourselves, but bid the ‘prester to fasten.’”[139]

“And as to such mortifications as the wearing of hair shirts, it would indeed be hard to bind men, even priests, to do this, … though among them many do so already, and some whole religious bodies too.” If he says, as he does, that this “does not appear,” what would he have? Would he wish them to publish to the world these penances? If they take his, Saint-German’s, advice, “they will come out of their cloisters every man into the market-place, and there kneel down in the gutters, and make their prayers in the open streets, and wear their hair shirts over their cowls, and then it shall appear and men shall see it. And truly in this way there will be no hypocrisy for their shirts of hair, and yet moreover it will be a good policy, for then they will not prick them.”[140]

In the same way More points out that people in talking against the wealth of the clergy are not less unreasonable than they are when criticising what they call their idle, easy lives. “Not indeed that we might not be able always to find plenty content to enter into their possessions, though we could not always find men enough content to enter their religions;” but when the matter is probed to the bottom, and it is a question how their wealth “would be better bestowed,” then “such ways as at the first face seemed very good and very charitable for the comfort and help of poor folk, appeared after reasoning more likely in a short while to make many more beggars than to relieve those that are so already. And some other ways that at first appeared for the greater advantage of the realm, and likely to increase the king’s honour and be a great strength for the country, and a great security for the prince as well as a great relief of the people’s charges, appeared clearly after further discussion to be ‘clean contrary, and of all other ways the worst.’”

“And to say the truth,” he continues, “I much marvel to see some folk now speak so much and boldly about taking away any possessions of the clergy.” For though once in the reign of Henry IV., “about the time of a great rumble that the heretics made, when they would have destroyed not only the clergy but the king and his nobility also, there was a foolish and false bill or two put into Parliament and dismissed as they deserved; yet in all my time, when I was conversant with the court, I had never found of all the nobility of this land more than seven (of which seven there are now three dead) who thought that it was either right or reasonable, or could be any way profitable to the realm, without lawful cause to take away from the clergy any of the possessions which good and holy princes, and other devout, virtuous people, of whom many now are blessed saints in heaven, have of devotion towards God given to the clergy to serve God and pray for all Christian souls.”[141]

In his Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, made in 1532, when Sir Thomas More was still Lord Chancellor of England, he protests against imputations made by his adversary and his follower Barnes, that the clergy were as a body corrupt. “Friar Barnes lasheth out against them, against their pride and pomp, and all their lives spent in” vicious living, “as if there were not a good priest in all the Catholic Church.… He jesteth on them because they wear crowns and long gowns, and the bishops wear rochets. And he hath likened them to bulls, asses, and apes, and the rochets to smocks.” “But he forgets how many good virtuous priests and religious people be put out of their places (in Germany) and spoiled of their living, and beaten, and sent out a-begging, while heretics and apostates, with their women, keep their shameless lives with the living that holy folks have dedicated unto God for the support of such as would serve God in spiritual cleanness and vowed chastity. He knows well enough, I warrant you, that the clergy can never lack persecution where heretics may grow; nor soon after the temporality either, as it has hitherto been proved in every such country yet.”[142]

He will not repeat all his “ribald railing upon all the clergy of Christendom who will not be heretics” when he calls “them bulls, apes, asses and abominable harlots and devils.” … “No good man doubts, although among the clergy there are many full bad (as, indeed, it were hard to have it otherwise among so great a multitude, whilst Christ’s own twelve were not without a traitor), that there are again among them many right virtuous folk, and such that the whole world beside fares the better for their holy living and their devout prayer.”[143]

Beyond the above supposed causes for the growth of the dislike of the clergy which Sir Thomas More weighs and considers in the above extracts, Saint-German gives others which are instructive as to the actual status of the clergy; but with which, as they do not reflect upon their moral character, Sir Thomas More was not immediately concerned in his reply. One occasion of the present difficulties and division, writes Saint-German, “has partly arisen by temporal men who have desired much the familiarity of priests in their games and sports, and who were wont to make much more of those who were companionable than of those that were not so, and have called them good fellows and good companions. And many also would have chaplains which they would not only suffer, but also command, to go hunting, hawking, and such other vain disports; and some would let them lie among other lay servants, where they could neither use prayer nor contemplation.”

Some even go so far as to insist on their chaplains wearing “liveries,” which “are not convenient in colour for a priest to wear.” Others give them worldly businesses to attend to in the way of stewardships, &c., “so that in this way their inward devotion of heart has become as cold and as weak, in a manner, as it is in lay men.” Nevertheless, in spite of the evil effect to be feared from this training, they do not hesitate to put them into the first benefice they have to dispose of; “and when they have done so, they will anon speak evil of priests, and report great lightness in them, and lightly compare the faults of one priest with another.” This they do “even when they themselves have been partly the occasion of their offences.”

Moreover, “where by the law all priests ought to be at the (parish) church on Sundays and holidays, and help the service of God in the choir, and also, when there, to be under the orders of the curate (or parish priest of the place), yet nevertheless many men who have chaplains will not allow them to come to the parish church; and when they are there, will not suffer them to receive their orders from the curate, but only from themselves; nor will they tolerate seeing them in the choir;” and what is the case with “chaplains and serving priests is also (true) of chantry priests and brotherhood priests in many places.”

To remedy these evils, Saint-German thinks, as indeed every one would be disposed to agree with him, that priests should be prohibited from hunting and all such games as are unsuitable to the priestly character, “though perchance he may, as for recreation, use honest disportes for a time.” Moreover, he should not “frequent the ale house or tavern,” and, if in his recreations the people are offended, he should be warned by “an abbot and a justice of the peace of the shire.” If, after this, he does not change, he ought to be suspended. Further than this, no one should be permitted to have a chaplain who has not “a standing house,” where the priest is able to have his private chamber with a lock and key, so that “he may use himself therein conveniently in reading, prayer, or contemplation, or such other labours and business as it is convenient for a priest to use.”[144]

Both in his work on the Division and in his previous tract, A Dyalogue between a Student of Law and a Doctor of Divinity, Saint-German lays great stress upon the question of mortuaries, as one that gave great offence to lay people at the period when he wrote. As he explained in the Dyalogue, the State had already interfered to regulate the exactions made by custom at funerals, but nevertheless “in some places the Church claims to have the taper that stands in the middle of the hearse over the heart of the corpse, and some claim to have all the tapers. Some also claim to have one of the torches that is about the hearse, and others to have all the torches. And if the body be brought in a charette or with coat armour or such other (ornaments), then they claim all the horses and charette and the apparel or part thereof.”[145] Now, in his other book, Saint-German thinks that though these things “are annulled already by statute,” there is rising up “a thing concerning mortuaries,” that “if it be allowed to continue” will cause great difficulties in the near future. It is this: “Many curates not regarding the king’s statute in that behalf, persuade their parishioners when they are sick to believe that they cannot be saved unless they restore them as much as the old mortuary would have amounted to.” All those who act in such a way are, he thinks, “bound in conscience to restitution, since they have obtained money under false information.”[146]

After arguing that Parliament has a right to legislate in all matters concerning goods and property, our author says: “It is certain that all such mortuaries were temporal goods, though they were claimed by spiritual men; and the cause why they were taken away was, because there were few things within this realm which caused more variance among the people than they did, when they were allowed. They were taken so far against the king’s laws and against justice and right, as shall hereafter appear. First they were taken not only after the husband’s death, but also after the death of the wife, who by the law of the realm had no goods, but what were the husband’s. They were taken also from servants and children, as well infants as others; and if a man died on a journey and had a household, he should pay mortuaries in both places.” Whilst in some places both the parson and the vicar claimed the mortuary; “and sometime even the curate (i.e. parish priest) would prohibit poor men to sell their goods, as were likely to come to them as mortuaries, for they would say it was done in order to defraud the Church.” And the mortuaries had to be handed over at once, or they would not bury the body. All these things led to the great growth of mortuaries “by the prescription of the spiritual law, and had they not been put an end to by Parliament they would have grown more and more.

“And in many places they were taken in such a way that it made the people think that their curates loved their mortuaries better than their lives. For this reason there rose in many places great division and grudge between them, which caused a breach of the peace, love, and charity that ought to be between the curate and his parishioners, to the great unquietness of many of the king’s subjects, as well spiritual as temporal, and to the great danger and peril of their souls. For these causes the said mortuaries be annulled by Parliament, as well in conscience as in law, and yet it is said that some curates use great extremities concerning the said mortuaries another way; and that is this: If at the first request the executor pay not the money that is appointed by the statute, they will anon have a citation against him, and in this he shall be so handled that, as it is said, it would have been generally much better for him to have paid the old mortuary, than the costs and expenses he will then have to pay.”[147]

Another fertile cause of complaint against the clergy at this time was, in Saint-German’s opinion, the way in which tithes were exacted; in many cases without much consideration for justice and reason. “In some places, the curates all exact their tenth of everything within the parish that is subject to tithe, although their predecessors from time immemorial have been contented to do without it: and this even though there is sufficient besides for the curates to live upon, and though perchance in old time something else has been assigned in place of it. In some places there has been asked, it is said, tithe of both chickens and eggs; in some places of milk and cheese; and in some others tithe of the ground and also of all that falleth to the ground. In other places tithes of servants’ wages is claimed without any deduction; and indeed it is in but few places that any servant shall go quite without some payment of tithe, though he may have spent all in sickness, or upon his father and mother, or such necessary expenses.”

Our author, from whom we get so much information as to the relations which existed in pre-Reformation times between the clergy and people, goes on to give additional instances of the possible hardships incidental to the collection of the ecclesiastical dues. These, where they exist, he, no doubt rightly, thinks do not tend to a good understanding between those who have the cure of souls, and who ought to be regarded rather in the light of spiritual fathers, than of worldly tax collectors. He admits, however, that these are the abuses of the few, and must not be considered as universally true of all the clergy. “And though,” he concludes, “these abusions are not used universally (God forbid that they should), for there are many good curates and other spiritual men that would not use them to win any earthly thing, yet when people of divers countries meet together, and one tells another of some such extremity used by some curates in his country, and the other in like manner to him, soon they come to think that such covetousness and harsh dealing is common to all curates. And although they do not well in so doing, for the offence of one priest is no offence of any other, if they will so take it: yet spiritual men themselves do nothing to bring the people out of this judgment; but allow these abuses to be used by some without correcting them.”[148]

To these objections, and more of the same kind, Sir Thomas More did not make, and apparently did not think it at all necessary to make, any formal reply. Indeed, he probably considered that where such things could be proved it would be both just and politic to correct them. His failing to reply on this score, however, seems to have been interpreted by Saint-German as meaning his rejection of all blame attaching to the clerical profession in these matters. In the Deballacion of Salem and Byzance, More protests that this is not his meaning at all. “He says,” writes he, “that I, in my mind, prove it to be an intolerable fault in the people to misjudge the clergy, since I think they have no cause so to do, and that there I leave them, as if all the whole cause and principal fault was in the temporality.” This, More declares he never dreamed of, for “if he seek these seven years in all my Apology, he shall find you no such words” to justify this view. On the contrary, he will find that “I say in those places, ‘that the people are too reasonable to take this or that thing’ amiss for ‘any reasonable cause of division.’”[149] The fact is, “I have never either laid the principal fault to the one or to the other.” To much that Saint-German said, More assented; and his general attitude to the general accusations he states in these words: “Many of them I will pass over untouched, both because most of them are such as every wise man will, I suppose, answer them himself in the reading, and satisfy his own mind without any need of my help therein, and because some things are there also very well said.”

Reading the four books referred to above together, one is forced to the conviction that the description of Sir Thomas More really represents the state of the clergy as it then was. That there were bad as well as good may be taken for granted, even without the admissions of More, but that as a body the clergy, secular or religious, were as hopelessly bad as subsequent writers have so often asked their readers to believe, or even that they were as bad as the reports, started chiefly by Lutheran emissaries, who were striving to plough up the soil in order to implant the new German teachings in the place of the old religious faith of England, would make out, is disproved by the tracts of both Saint-German and Sir Thomas More. In such a discussion it may be taken for granted that the worst would have appeared. Had the former any evidence of general and hopeless corruption he would, when pressed by his adversary, have brought it forward. Had the latter—whose honesty and full knowledge must be admitted by all—any suspicion of what later generations have been asked to believe as the true picture of ecclesiastical life in pre-Reformation England, he would not have dared, even if his irreproachable integrity would have permitted him, to reject as a caricature and a libel even Christopher Saint-German’s moderate picture.

In one particular More categorically denies a charge made by Tyndale against the clergy in general, and against the Popes for permitting so deplorable a state of things in regard to clerical morals. As the charge first suggested by Tyndale has been repeated very frequently down to our own time, it is useful to give the evidence of so unexceptional authority as that of the Lord Chancellor of England. Tyndale declared that although marriage was prohibited by ecclesiastical law to the clergy of the Western Church, the Pope granted leave “unto as many as bring money” to keep concubines. And after asserting that this was the case in Germany, Wales, Ireland, &c., he adds, “And in England thereto they be not few who have (this) licence—some of the Pope, and some of their ordinaries.” To this More says: “We have had many pardons come hither, and many dispensations and many licences too, but yet I thank our Lord I never knew none such, nor I trust never shall, nor Tyndale, I trow either; but that he listeth loud to lie. And as for his licences customably given by the ordinaries, I trust he lies in regard to other countries, for as for England I am sure he lies.”[150]

It would of course be untrue to suggest that there were no grounds whatever for objection to the clerical life of the period. At all times the ministers of the Church of God are but human instruments, manifesting now more now less the human infirmities of their nature. A passage in a sermon preached by Bishop Longland of Lincoln in 1538 suggests that the most crying abuse among the clergy of that time was simony. “Yet there is one thing, or ill which the prophet saw not in this city (of Sodom). What is that? That which specially above other things should have been seen. What is it? That which most is abused in this world. I pray thee, what is it? Make no more ado: tell it. That which almost destroyed the Church of Christ. Then, I pray thee, shew it: shew what it is: let it be known, that remedy may be had and the thing holpen. What is it? Forsooth it is simony, simony: chapping and changing, buying and selling of benefices and of spiritual gifts and promotions. And no better merchandise is nowadays than to procure advowsons of patrons for benefices, for prebends, for other spiritual livelihood, whether it be by suit, request, by letters, by money bargain or otherwise: yea, whether it be to buy them or to sell them, thou shalt have merchants plenty, merchants enough for it.

“These advowsons are abroad here in this city. In which city? In most part of all the great cities of this realm. In the shops, in the streets, a common merchandise. And they that do come by their benefices or promotions under such a manner shall never have grace of God to profit the Church.”[151]

It is interesting to recall the fact that the late Mr. Brewer, whose intimate knowledge of this period of our national history is admitted on all hands, arrived, after the fullest investigation, at a similar conclusion as to the real state of the Church in pre-Reformation England. Taking first the religious houses, this high authority considers that no doubt many circumstances had contributed at this time to lower the tone of religious discipline; but taking a broad survey, the following is the historian’s verdict: “That in so large a body of men, so widely dispersed, seated for so many centuries in the richest and fairest estates of England, for which they were mainly indebted to their own skill, perseverance, and industry, discreditable members were to be found (and what literary chiffonnier, raking in the scandalous annals of any profession, cannot find filth and corruption?) is likely enough, but that the corruption was either so black or so general as party spirit would have us believe, is contrary to all analogy, and is unsupported by impartial and contemporary evidence.”[152]

“It is impossible,” he says in another place, “that the clergy can have been universally immoral and the laity have remained sound, temperate, and loyal.” This, by the way, is exactly what More, who lived in the period, insisted upon.

“But,” continues Brewer, “if these general arguments are not sufficient, I refer my readers to a very curious document, dated the 8th of July 1519, when a search was instituted by different commissioners on a Sunday night, in London and its suburbs, for all suspected and disorderly persons. I fear no parish in London, nor any town in the United Kingdom, of the same amount of population, would at this day pass a similar ordeal with equal credit.”[153] And in another place he sums up the question in these words: “Considering the temper of the English people, it is not probable that immorality could have existed among the ancient clergy to the degree which the exaggeration of poets, preachers, and satirists might lead us to suppose. The existence of such corruption is not justified by authentic documents or by any impartial and broad estimate of the character and conduct of the nation before the Reformation. If these complaints of preachers and moralists are to be accepted as authoritative on this head, there would be no difficulty in producing abundant evidence from the Reformers themselves that the abuses and enormities of their own age, under Edward VI. and Elizabeth, were far greater than in the ages preceding.”[154]

It is too often assumed that in the choice and education of the clergy little care and discretion was exercised by the bishops and other responsible officials, and that thus those unfit for the sacred ministry by education and character often found their way into the priesthood. In the last Convocation held on the eve of the Reformation a serious attempt was evidently made to correct whatever abuses existed in this matter, when it was enacted that no bishop might ordain any subject not born in his diocese or beneficed in it, or without a domicile in it for three months, even with dimissorial letters. Further, that no secular clerk should be ordained without testimonial letters as to character from the parish priest of the place where he was born or had lived for three years, sealed by the archdeacon of the district, or in the case of a university, by the seal of the vice-chancellor. No one whatsoever was to be admitted to the subdiaconate “who was not so versed in the Epistles and Gospels, at least those contained in the Missal, as to be able at once to explain their grammatical meaning to the examiner.” He must also show that he understands and knows whatever pertains to his office.[155]

The most important book of this period dealing with the life and education of the clergy is a tract printed by Wynkyn de Worde about the beginning of the sixteenth century. It was written by William de Melton, Chancellor of York, and at the end is the declaration of Colet, that he has read it and highly approves of its contents.[156] The author states that he desires to instruct the “many young men” who every Ember time come up to York for ordination in their duties. No person, he says, ought to present himself to receive the priesthood who is not prepared to lead a life in all things worthy of the sacred ministry. He should remember that he is really to be accounted one of the twelve who sat with our Lord at His last supper. He must be sufficiently versed in the learning of the world not to dishonour the priestly calling, and above all be taught in His school “who has said, ‘Learn of Me, for I am meek and humble of heart.’”

“And since I am now on the question of those only partly well learned,” continues the author, “I wish all coming for ordination to understand that always and everywhere those who have not yet attained to at least a fair knowledge of good letters are to be rejected as candidates for Holy Orders. They can in no way be considered to have a fair knowledge of letters who, though skilful in grammar, do not possess the science well enough to read promptly and easily Latin books, and above all, the sacred Scriptures, and expound their meaning and the literal signification of the words as they stand in the books; and this not haltingly, but readily and easily, so as to show that they know the language not merely slightly and slenderly, but that they possess a full and radical knowledge of it and its construction. Therefore, those who read the sacred Scriptures or other Latin work with difficulty, or, whilst reading, often mistake the proper connection of the words, or read them with such pauses as to seem not to be used to the Latin language, are to be refused Sacred Orders until, by diligent study, they have become more skilled in their letters.”

In the same way the tract goes on to declare that those who are unable to explain or understand the spiritual signification of Scripture are to be refused ordination to the sacred ministry until they show themselves at least fairly well able to do so. “To be reckoned among even the fairly proficient, we require,” says the author, “such a thorough and sure foundation of grammatical knowledge that there may be hopes that alone and without other teachers they may, from books and diligent study, endeavour day by day to improve themselves by reading and study.” Then addressing the candidates the author begs them, if they feel they have not this necessary foundation, “not through mere presumption to offer themselves to the examiners.” “Seek not a position in the Church of God in which neither now nor during your whole life will you be able to show yourself a fitting minister. For those who before taking Holy Orders have not fitted themselves fairly well in learning rarely if ever are seen to make progress in literature. On the contrary, they ever remain, even to old age, dunces and stupid, and, furthermore, such priests known to the common people for such manifest ignorance are a great scandal which involves the whole sacred ministry.”

Great damage is done to the whole Church of God through the ignorance of the clergy. Both in towns and country places there are priests who occupy themselves, some in mean and servile work, some who give themselves to tavern drinking; the former can hardly help mixing themselves up with women, the latter employ their time in games of dice, &c., and some of them pass it in the vanities of hunting and hawking. Thus do they spend their whole lives to extreme old age in idleness and non-religious occupations. Nor could they do otherwise, for as they are quite ignorant of good letters, how can they be expected to work at and take a pleasure in reading and study; rather throwing away these despised and neglected books, they turn to that kind of miserable and unpriestly life described above, hoping to kill time and cure their dulness by such things.

He then goes on to exhort the young to implant in their hearts a strong desire to study deeply in the books of God’s Law rather than to be tainted thus by the stains and vanities of the world which they were supposed to have left. “It is,” he continues, “impossible that such a holy desire should possess you, unless you have made progress in such studies before taking Holy Orders, and are so advanced in your literary studies that the reading of many books is both easy and pleasant to you, and the construction of the meaning of a passage no longer difficult, but whilst reading you may quickly and easily follow at least the literal sense of the sentence.”

This interesting tract then goes on to warn subdeacons not to take upon themselves the perpetual obligations of Sacred Orders unless they are conscious to themselves of no reason or objection, however secret and hidden, which may stand in the way of their faithfully keeping their promises. They must feel that they enter the ranks of the clergy only from the motive of serving God. Then, after warning the clergy against the vices which specially detract from the sacred character of the priesthood, the author continues, “Let us therefore turn to study, reading, and meditation of the Holy Scriptures as the best remedy against unworthy sloth and foolish desires. Let us not consume the time given us uselessly and fruitlessly.” A priest should say his Hours and Mass daily. He should spend the morning till mid-day in choir and other works, and even then not think he has fulfilled the whole duty of the priesthood. A priest is bound to serious studies and meditation. “Constant reading and meditation of the books of God’s law and the writings of the holy Fathers and Doctors are the best remedy for slothful habits,” and these have been put at the disposition of all through the printing-press. Just as a workman has besides his shop a workroom where he has to spend hours preparing the wares that he offers for sale, so the priest, who in the church on Sunday offers his people the things necessary for salvation, should spend days and nights in holy reading and study in order to make them his own before he hands them on to others. “Wherefore, my dearest brethren, let us think ourselves proper priests only when we find our delight and joy in the constant study of Holy Scripture.”

So much for the important advice given to priests or those intending to be priests as to the necessity of acquiring previous habits of study. Not infrequently the fact that in 1532 Parliament did actually transfer the power of ecclesiastical legislation hitherto possessed by Convocation to the Crown, is adduced as proof that to the nation at large the powers of the clergy, for a long time resented, had at length become a yoke not to be borne. Yet it is clear that the policy of the king to crush the clergy in this way was by no means heartily supported by the Commons. There can be no doubt whatever that the petition of the Commons against the spirituality really emanated from the Court, and that the Lower House was compelled by direct royal influence to take the course indicated by royal will. Four drafts of the petition existing among the State papers in the Record Office put this beyond doubt, as they are all corrected in the well-known hand of Henry’s adviser at this time, Thomas Cromwell. The substance of the petition states that on account of the diffusion of heretical books, and the action of the bishops in spiritual courts, “much discord had arisen between the clergy and the laity at large.” The answer of the bishops denies all knowledge of this discord, at least on their parts. The ordinaries, they said, exercised spiritual jurisdiction, and no one might interfere in that, as their right to make laws in this sphere was from God, and could be proved by Scripture. The two jurisdictions could not clash as they were derived from the same source, namely, the authority given by God. Finally, they practically refused to consider the possibility of any just royal interference in matters of the purely ecclesiastical domain. Their resistance was, of course, as we know, of no avail; but the incident shows that up to the very eve of the changes the clergy had no notion of any surrender of their spiritual prerogatives, and that it was the Crown and not the Commons that was hostile to them.[157]

CHAPTER VI
ERASMUS

Keenly alive to the spiritual wants of the age, and to what he, in common with many others of the time, considered crying abuses in the government of the Church, resulting from the excessive temporal grandeur of ecclesiastics engaged in secular sovereignty and government, Erasmus, like many of his contemporaries, is often perhaps injudicious in the manner in which he advocated reforms. But when the matter is sifted to the bottom, it will commonly be found that his ideas are just. He clamoured loudly and fearlessly for the proper enforcing of ecclesiastical discipline, and for a complete change in the stereotyped modes of teaching; and he proclaimed the need of a thorough literary education for Churchmen as the best corrective of what he held to be the narrowing formalism of mediæval scholastic training. It is, perhaps, hardly wonderful that his general attitude in these matters should have been misunderstood and exaggerated. By many of his Catholic contemporaries he was looked upon as a secret rebel against received authority, and in truth as the real intellectual force of the whole Lutheran movement. By the Reformers themselves, regarded as at heart belonging to them, he was upbraided as a coward, and spoken of as one who had not the courage of his convictions. Posterity has represented him now in the one aspect, now in the other, now as at best a lukewarm Catholic, now as a secret and dangerous heretic. By most Catholics probably he has been regarded as a Reformer, as pronounced even as Luther himself; or to use the familiar phrase founded upon an expression of his own, they considered that “his was the egg which Luther hatched.” Few writers have endeavoured to read any meaning into his seemingly paradoxical position by reference to his own explanations, or by viewing it in the light of the peculiar circumstances of the times in which he lived, and which are, to some extent at least, responsible for it.

Desiderius Erasmus was born at Rotterdam, in the year 1467. His father’s Christian name was Gerhard, of which Desiderius was intended for the Latin, and Erasmus for the Greek, equivalent. Other surname he had none, as he was born out of wedlock; but his father adopted the responsibility of his education, for which he provided by placing him first as a chorister in the cathedral of Utrecht, and subsequently by sending him to Deventer, then one of the best schools in Northern Europe. Deventer was at that time presided over by the learned scholar and teacher Alexander Hegius, and amongst his fellow-students there, Erasmus found several youths who subsequently, as men, won for themselves renown in the learned world. One of them, under the title of Adrian VI., subsequently occupied the Papal chair.

His father and mother both died of the plague whilst Erasmus was still young. At the age of thirteen he was taken from Deventer by the three guardians to whose charge he had been committed, and sent to a purely ecclesiastical school, meant to prepare those intended only for a life in the cloister. Here he remained for three years, and after having for a considerable time resisted the suggestions of his masters that he should join their Order, he finally entered the novitiate of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine at Stein, near Gouda. Here he was professed at the age of nineteen, and after the usual interval was ordained priest.

Much obscurity and many apparent contradictions prevent us fully understanding Erasmus’s early life, and in particular the portion spent by him in the cloister. One thing, however, would seem to be quite clear; he could never have had any vocation for the religious life. His whole subsequent history shows this unmistakeably; and the ill-judged zeal of those who practically forced him into a state for which he was constitutionally unfitted, and for which he had no aptitude or inclination, must, if we take his account of the facts as correct, be as strongly condemned by all right-thinking people as by himself. He, however, appears not to have understood that this may have been a special case, and not the usual lot of youths entering religion. One evident result of his experience is the bitter feeling created in his heart towards the religious Orders and the uncompromising hostility he ever after displayed towards them. In the celebrated letter he wrote to the papal secretary, Lambert Grunnius, which was intended for the information of the Pope himself, and which is supposed to describe his own case, Erasmus justly condemns in the strongest language the practice of enticing youths into the cloister before they were fully aware of what they were doing. If we are to believe the statements made in that letter, Erasmus did not think that his was by any means a singular case. Agents of the religious Orders, he declared, were ever hanging about the schools and colleges, endeavouring to entice the youthful students into their ranks by any and every method. But he is careful to add, “I do not condemn the religious Orders as such. I do not approve of those who make the plunge and then fly back to liberty as a licence for loose living, and desert improperly what they undertook foolishly. But dispositions vary; all things do not suit all characters, and no worse misfortune can befall a youth of intellect than to be buried under conditions from which he can never after extricate himself. The world thought well of my schoolmaster guardian because he was neither a liar nor a scamp nor a gambler, but he was coarse, avaricious, and ignorant, he knew nothing beyond the confused lessons he taught to his classes. He imagined that in forcing a youth to become a monk he would be offering a sacrifice acceptable to God. He used to boast of the many victims which he destined to Dominic and Francis and Benedict.”[158]

Without any taste for the routine of conventual life, and with his mind filled by an ardent love of letters, which there seemed in the narrow circle of his cloister no prospect of ever being able to gratify, the short period of Erasmus’s stay at Stein must have been to him in the last degree uncongenial and irksome. Fortunately, however, for his own peace of mind and for the cause of general learning, a means was quickly found by which he was practically emancipated from the restraints he ought never to have undertaken. The Bishop of Cambray obtained permission to have him as secretary, and after keeping him a short time in this position he enabled him to proceed to the University of Paris. From this time Erasmus was practically released from the obligations of conventual life; and in 1514, when some question had been raised about his return to the cloister, he readily obtained from the Pope a final release from a form of life for which obviously he was constitutionally unfitted, and the dress of which he had been permitted to lay aside seven years previously.

The generosity of his episcopal patron did not suffice to meet all Erasmus’s wants. To add to his income he took pupils, and with one of them, Lord Mountjoy, he came to England in 1497. He spent, apparently, the next three years at Oxford, living in the house which his Order had at that University; whilst there he made the acquaintance of the most learned Englishmen of that time, and amongst others of Grocyn, Linacre, and Colet. He also at this time took up the study of the Greek language, with which previously he had but a slender acquaintance, and his ardour was so great that the following year, 1498, whilst at work on the Adagia, he could write, “I am giving my whole soul to the study of Greek; directly I get some money I shall buy Greek authors first, and then some clothes.” From 1499 to 1506 he was continually moving about in various learned centres of France and Holland, his longest stay being at the University of Louvain.

In the April of 1506 he was again in England, first with Archbishop Warham and Sir Thomas More in London, and subsequently at Cambridge; but in a few months he was enabled to carry out the plan of visiting Italy which he had long contemplated. He engaged to escort the two sons of Sebastian Boyer, the English court physician, as far as Bologna, and by September he was already in Turin, where he took his doctor’s degree in divinity. The winter of the same year he passed at Bologna, and reached Venice in the spring of 1507.

His main object in directing his steps to this last-named city was to pass the second and enlarged edition of his Adagia through the celebrated Aldine printing-press. Here he found gathered together, within reach of the press, a circle of illustrious scholars. Aldus himself, a man, as Erasmus recalled in a letter written in 1524, “approaching the age of seventy years, but in all matters relating to letters still in the prime of his youth,” was his host. In 1508 Erasmus removed to Padua, and the following year passed on to Rome, where he was well received. His stay in the eternal city at this time was not prolonged, for a letter received from Lord Mountjoy announcing the death of Henry VII., and the good affection of his youthful successor to learning, determined him to turn his face once more towards England. He had left the country with keen regret, for, as he wrote to Dean Colet, “I can truly say that no place in the world has given me so many friends—true, learned, helpful, and illustrious friends—as the single city of London,” and he looked forward to his return with pleasurable expectation.

For a brief period on his arrival again in this country Erasmus stayed in London at the house of Sir Thomas More, where, at his suggestion, he wrote the Enconium Moriæ, one of the works by which he is best known to the general reader, and the one, perhaps, the spirit of which has the most given rise to many mistaken notions as to the author’s religious convictions.

From London, in 1510, he was invited by Bishop Fisher to come and teach at Cambridge, where by his influence he had been appointed Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity and Regius Reader of Greek. “Unless I am much mistaken,” Erasmus writes, “the Bishop of Rochester is a man without an equal at this time, both as to integrity of life, learning, or broad-minded sympathies. One only do I except, as a very Achilles, the Archbishop of Canterbury (Warham), who alone keeps me in London, though I confess not very unwillingly.”[159]

In estimating the spirit which dictated the composition of the Moriæ, it is well to remember not only that it represented almost as much the thought and genius of Sir Thomas More as of Erasmus himself, but that, at the very time it was taking definite shape in More’s house at Chelsea, the author’s two best friends were the two great and devout churchmen, Archbishop Warham and the saintly Bishop Fisher. Moreover, Sir Thomas More himself denies that to this work of Erasmus there can justly be affixed the note of irreverence or irreligion; he answers for the good intention of the author, and accepts his own share of responsibility for the publication of the book.

The period of Erasmus’s stay at Cambridge did not extend beyond three years. The stipend attached to his professorships was not large, and Erasmus was still, apparently, in constant want of money. Archbishop Warham continued his friend, and by every means tried continually to interest others directly in the cause of learning and indirectly in the support of Erasmus, who is ever complaining that his means are wholly inadequate to supply his wants. The scholar, however, remained on the best of terms with all the chief English churchmen of the day, until, as he wrote to the Abbot of St. Bertin, “Erasmus has been almost transformed into an Englishman, with such overwhelming kindness do so many treat me, and above all, my special Mæcenas, the Archbishop of Canterbury. He indeed is not only my patron, but that of all the learned, amongst whom I but hold a low place. Immortal gods! how pleasant, how ready, how fertile is the wit of that man! What dexterity does he not show in managing the most complicated business! What exceptional learning! What singular courtesy does he not extend to all! What gaiety and geniality at interviews! so that he never sends people away from him sad. Added to this, how great and how prompt is his liberality! He alone seems to be ignorant of his own great qualities and the height of his dignity and fortune. No one can be more true and faithful to his friends; and, in a word, he is truly a Primate, not only in dignity, but in everything worthy of praise.”[160]

Erasmus returns to this same subject in writing to a Roman Cardinal about this time. When I think, he says, of the Italian sky, the rich libraries, and the society of the learned men in Rome, I am tempted to look back to the eternal city with regret. “But the wonderful kindness of William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, to me mitigates my desire to return. Had he been my father or brother he could not have been more kind and loving. I have been accorded, too, the same reception by many other bishops of England. Amongst these stands pre-eminent the Bishop of Rochester, a man who, in addition to his uprightness of life, is possessed of deep and varied learning, and of a soul above all meanness, for which gifts he is held here in England in the highest estimation.”[161]

Erasmus certainly had reason to be grateful to Warham and his other English friends for their ready attention to his, at times importunate, requests. Warham, he writes at one time, “has given me a living worth a hundred nobles and changed it at my request into a pension of one hundred crowns. Within these few years he has given me more than four hundred nobles without my asking. One day he gave me one hundred and fifty. From other bishops I have received more than one hundred, and Lord Mountjoy has secured me a pension of one hundred crowns.” In fact, in the Compendium Vitæ, a few years later, he says that he would have remained for the rest of his life in England had the promises made to him been always fulfilled. This constant and importunate begging on the part of the great scholar forms certainly an unpleasant feature in his life. He gets from Dean Colet fifteen angels for a dedication, and in reference to his translation of St. Basil on the Prophet Isaias, begs Colet to find out whether Bishop Fisher will be inclined “to ease his labours with a little reward,” adding himself, “O this begging! I know well enough that you will be laughing at me.”[162] Again, whilst lamenting his poverty and his being compelled to beg continually in this way, he adds that Linacre has been lecturing him for thus pestering his friends, and has warned him to spare Archbishop Warham and his friend Mountjoy a little. In this same letter, written in October 1513, there are signs of friction with some of the Cambridge teachers of theology, which may have helped Erasmus in his determination once more to leave England. Not that he professed to care what people thought, for he tells Colet he does not worry about those whom he calls in derision “the Scotists,” but would treat them as he would a wasp. Nevertheless, he is still half inclined by the opposition to stop the work he is engaged on; confessing, also, that he is almost turned away from the design of thus translating St. Basil, as the Bishop of Rochester is not anxious for him to do it, and—at least so a friend has told him—rather suspects that he is translating, not from the original Greek, but is making use of a Latin version.

Almost immediately after writing this letter Erasmus again bade farewell to England, and passed up the Rhine to Strasburg, where he made the acquaintance of Wimpheling, Sebastian Brant, and others. The following year, 1515, he went on to Basle, attracted by the great reputation of the printing-press set up in that city by Froben. He was there eagerly welcomed by the bishop of the city, who had gathered round him many men imbued with the true spirit of learning; and Erasmus soon became the centre of this brilliant group of scholars. From this time Basle became Erasmus’s home, although, especially in the early years, he was always on the move. He paid a flying visit once more, in 1517, to England, but he had learnt to love his independence too much to entertain any proposals for again undertaking duties that would tie him to any definite work in any definite place. Even the suggestions of friends that he would find congenial and profitable pursuits in England were unheeded, and he remained unmoved even when his friend Andrew Ammonius wrote to say the king himself was looking for his return. “What about Erasmus?” Henry had asked. “When is he coming back to us? He is the light of our age. Oh that he would return to us!”[163]

From England, however, he continued to receive supplies of money; although his circumstances improved so much with the steady circulation of his books, that he was not at this second period of his life so dependent upon the charity of his friends. About the year 1520 Erasmus settled permanently at Basle as literary superintendent of Froben’s press. What, no doubt, induced him to do so, even more than the offer of this position, was the fact that Basle had then become, by the establishment of printing-presses by Amberbach and Froben, the centre of the German book-trade. Froben died in 1527, and that circumstance, as well as the religious troubles which, separating Basle from the empire and making it the focus of civil strife, ended in wrecking learning there altogether, put an end to Erasmus’s connection with the press which for eight years had taken the lead of all the presses of Europe. Not only was the literary superintendence of the work completely in the hands of Erasmus during this period which he described as his “mill,” but all the dedications and prefaces to Froben’s editions of the Fathers were the distinct work of his own pen. His literary activity at this period was enormous, and only the power he had acquired of working with the greatest rapidity could have enabled him to cope with the multiplicity of demands made upon him. Scaliger relates that Aldus informed him Erasmus could do twice as much work in a given time as any other man he had ever met. This untiring energy enabled him to cope with the immense correspondence which, as he says, came pouring in “daily from almost all parts, from kings, princes, prelates, men of learning, and even from persons of whose existence I was, till then, ignorant,” and caused him not infrequently to write as many as forty letters a day.

On Froben’s death in 1527, the fanatical religious contentions forced him to remove to Freiburg, in Breisgau, where he resided from 1529 to 1535. The need for seeing his Ecclesiastes through the press, as well as a desire to revisit the scenes of his former activity, took him back to Basle; but his health had been giving way for some years, and, at the age of sixty-nine, he expired at Basle on July 12, 1536.

Such is a brief outline of the life of the most remarkable among the leaders of the movement known as the renaissance of letters. Without some general knowledge of the main facts of his life and work, it would be still more difficult than it is to understand the position he took in regard to the great religious revolution during the later half of his life. With these main facts before us we may turn to a consideration of his mental attitude towards some of the many momentous questions which were then searching men’s hearts and troubling their souls.

In the first place, of course, comes the important problem of Erasmus’s real position as regards the Church itself and its authority. That he was outspoken on many points, even on points which we now regard as well within the border-line of settled matters of faith and practice, may be at once admitted, but he never appears to have wavered in his determination at all costs to remain true and loyal to the Pope and the other constituted ecclesiastical authorities. The open criticism of time-worn institutions in which he indulged, and the sweeping condemnation of the ordinary teachings of the theological schools, which he never sought to disguise, brought him early in his public life into fierce antagonism with many devoted believers in the system then in vogue.

The publication of his translation of the New Testament from the Greek brought matters to an issue. The general feeling in England and amongst those best able to judge had been favourable to the undertaking, and on its first appearance Erasmus was assured of the approval of the learned world at the English universities.[164] More wrote Latin verses addressed to the reader of the new translation, calling it “the holy work and labour of the learned and immortal Erasmus,” to purify the text of God’s Word. Colet was warm in its praises. Copies, he writes to Erasmus, are being readily bought and read. Many approved, although, of course, as was to be expected, some spoke against the undertaking. In England, as elsewhere, says Colet, “we have theologians such as you describe in your Moriæ, by whom to be praised is dishonour, to be blamed is the highest praise.” For his part, Colet has, he says, only one regret that he did not himself know Greek sufficiently well to be able fully to appreciate what Erasmus had done, though “he is only too thankful for the light that has been thrown upon the true meaning of the Holy Scripture.” Archbishop Warham writes what is almost an official letter, to tell Erasmus that his edition of the New Testament has been welcomed by all his brother bishops in England to whom he has shown it. Bishop Tunstall was away in Holland, where, amidst the insanitary condition of the islands of Zeeland, which he so graphically describes, he finds consolation in the study of the work. He cannot too highly praise it—not merely as the opening up of Greek sources of information upon the meaning of the Bible, but as affording the fullest commentary on the sacred text.[165] Bishop Fisher was equally clear as to the service rendered to religion by Erasmus in this version of the Testament; and when, in 1519, Froben had agreed to bring out a second edition, Erasmus turned to Fisher and More to assist in making the necessary corrections.[166]

More defended his friend most strenuously. Writing to Marten Dorpius in 1515, he upbraided him with suggesting that theologians would never welcome the help afforded to biblical studies by Erasmus’s work on the Greek text of the Bible. He ridicules as a joke not meriting a serious reply the report that Erasmus and his friends had declared there was no need of the theologians and philosophers, but that grammar would suffice. Erasmus, who has studied in the universities of Paris, Padua, Bologna, and Rome, and taught with distinction in some of them, is not likely to hold such absurd ideas. At the same time, More does not hesitate to say that in many things he thinks some theologians are to be blamed, especially those who, rejecting all positive science, hold that man is born to dispute about questions of all kinds which have not the least practical utility “even as regards the pietas fidei or the cultivation of sound morals.”

At great length More defends the translation against the insinuations made by Dorpius, who evidently regarded it as a sacrilege to suggest that the old Latin editions in use in the Church were incorrect. St. Jerome, says More, did not hesitate to change when he believed the Latin to be wrong, and Dorpius’s suggestion that Erasmus should have only noted the errors and not actually made any change would, had the same principle been applied, have prevented St. Jerome’s work altogether. If it was thought proper that the Latin codices should be corrected at that time by Greek manuscripts, why not now? The Church had then an equally recognised version before the corrections of St. Jerome.[167]

There were, indeed, as might be expected, some discordant notes in the general chorus of English praise. For the time, however, they remained unheeded, and, in fact, were hardly heard amid the general verdict of approval, in which the Pope, cardinals, and other highly-placed ecclesiastics joined. Erasmus, however, was fully prepared for opposition of a serious character. Writing to Cambridge at the time, he says that he knows what numbers of people prefer “their old mumpsimus to the new sumpsimus,” and condemn the undertaking on the plea that no such work as the correction of the text of Holy Scripture ought to be undertaken without the authority of a general Council.[168]

It is easy to understand the grounds upon which men who had been trained on old methods looked with anxiety, and even horror, at this new departure. Scholarship and literary criticism, when applied to the pagan classics, might be tolerable enough; but what would be the result were the same methods to be used in the examination of the works of the Fathers, and more especially in criticism of the text of the Holy Scripture itself? Overmuch study of the writings of ancient Greece and Rome had, it appeared to many, in those days, hardly tended to make the world much better: even in high places pagan models had been allowed to displace ideals and sentiments, which, if barbarous and homely, were yet Christian. Theologians had long been accustomed to look upon the Latin Vulgate text as almost sacrosanct, and after the failure of the attempt in the thirteenth century to improve and correct the received version, no critical revision had been dreamt of as possible, or indeed considered advisable. Those best able to judge, such as Warham and More and Fisher, were not more eager to welcome, than others to condemn and ban, this attempt on the part of Erasmus to apply the now established methods of criticism to the sacred text. Not that the edition itself was in reality a work of either sound learning or thorough scholarship. As an edition of the Greek Testament it is now allowed on all hands to have no value whatever; but the truth is, that the Greek played only a subordinate part in Erasmus’s scheme. His principal object was to produce a new Latin version, and to justify this he printed the Greek text along with it. And this, though in itself possessing little critical value, was, in reality, the starting-point for all modern Biblical criticism. As a modern writer has said, “Erasmus did nothing to solve the problem, but to him belongs the honour of having first propounded it.”