burden to these English humanists, like More and Colet, whose friendship for this rising star of humanists lasted till death. Erasmus had scarcely entered on his career of Latin authorship when he first arrived, nor did he know much Greek. In fact he left England to study Greek in Paris. Some years later he lectured for a while at Cambridge. In England, as elsewhere, his works won vogue and influence, and were a power making for humane and religious enlightenment,- an enlightenment from a foreign source, which might be dimmed crossing the Channel.

No man in England worked more earnestly to spread learning and piety than John Colet, who was of the same age as Erasmus. Born in affluence, he was educated at Oxford, and then travelled and studied in France and Italy. Whether or not he ever listened to Ficino and Pico della Mirandula, he was influenced by their writings, and by the Hierarchies of pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. He was a man of humane piety; and was strongly drawn to the Epistles of St. Paul, which he studied only in the Vulgate. Returning to his native land, he lectured at Oxford during portions of the years from 1497 to 1499, chiefly upon Romans and Corinthians; and presented in these lectures a sound appreciation of the actual circumstances under which Paul wrote. He made an understanding of the historical situation a basis of his pious exposition of the text. This was indeed to introduce the new learning in biblical studies to his hearers.

In 1504 Henry VII made Colet Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral. He had always spoken out about church abuses, and as Dean found much that needed change. He began to preach in the Cathedral on Sundays and other festivals, in itself an innovation which was no more agreeable to his Chapter than his insistence upon temperance in food and drink. In fact, he did and said much to draw the dislike of his clerical brethren. His most memorable sermon was preached before a Convocation of the church called in 1511 to consider heresies and other matters. Colet showed them another kind of heresy, very unpleasant to their ears, the heresy of their own evil lives. His sermon, animated with instincts reappearing

in the English Reformation, shows this English man utilizing whatever enlightenment he had obtained and remaking it into the expression of convictions of his own.

The text was from the twelfth chapter of Romans: "Be not conformed to this world, but be ye reformed in the newness of your understanding, that ye may prove what is the good will of God, well pleasing and perfect." Unwillingly, yet in obedience to the Archbishop's command, he had come to preach before them, and to warn them to set their minds upon the reformation of the Church. The apostle forbids them to be conformed to the world, to wit, "in devilish pride, in carnal concupiscence, in worldly covetousness, in secular business." The preacher amplifies his theme from the worldly lives and customs of the clergy, through which the dignity of the priesthood is brought down to contempt, the order of the Church confused, and the laity given occasion to stumble by the example set them of the love of the world that casts men headlong into hell. "We are also nowadays grieved of heretics, men mad with marvellous foolishness. But the heresies of them are not so pestilent and pernicious unto us and the people, as the evil and wicked life of priests; the which, if we believe St. Bernard, is a certain kind of heresy, and the chief of all and most perilous."

The reform and restoration of the Church's estate, continues the preacher, must begin with "you our fathers (the bishops), and so follow in us your priests and in all the clergy." The Church needs no new laws, but the enforcement of what she has. Let them be recalled and rehearsed: those which warn you bishops to admit only worthy men to holy orders, and which command that benefices shall be given only to such; those which condemn simony and enjoin personal residence; those which forbid the clergy to be merchants, usurers, or to haunt taverns and carry arms, and consort with women; those which command them to walk the straight and narrow way, and not to concern themselves with secular business or sue in princes' courts for earthly things; those which govern the election of you bishops and enjoin your duties and "the

good bestowing of the patrimony of Christ "; and those which prevent the uncleanness of courts and provide for provincial and general councils. Let it not be said of them that they lay grievous burdens on other men's backs, and will not so much as touch them with their little finger. If ye keep the laws, ye will give us the light of your example; and we shall set an example to the laity: and “you will be honored of the people." *

4

This sermon was a broad undoctrinal program of the need for a practical self-abnegating reformation. No wonder that reputed "Lollards" liked to hear Colet preach, and that certain of the clergy whose withers were not unwrung made a futile attempt to have him tried for heresy. Young King Henry said Colet was a good enough doctor for him. He has another title to fame, as founder of St. Paul's School, which was to continue a beneficial factor in the education of English boys. Although a Cathedral school existed, Colet founded his separately about the year 1510, " desiring nothing more than education and bringing up children in good manners and literature"; and he set as patrons and defenders, governors and rulers of that same school the most honest and faithful fellowship of the Mercers of London." 5

The statutes of the founder prescribed the duties of master, undermaster, and chaplain, and rules for the pupils: "Children of all nations and countries indifferently to the number of 153 according to the number of seats in the school." The school hours were set and rules of behavior. As to what should be taught, says the founder, "it passeth my wit to devise and determine in particular, but in general to speak and somewhat to say my mind, I would they [the pupils] were taught always in good literature, both Latin and Greek, and good authors such as have the very Roman eloquence joined with wisdom, especially Christian authors that wrote their wisdom with

4 This sermon was preached in Latin. The old English version is given in an appendix to J. H. Lupton's Life of Dean Colet, (London, 1887), who has also edited with an English translation, Colet's lectures on Romans and Corinthians.

5 From the prologue to the Statutes, which are printed in an appendix to Lupton's Life.

clean and chaste Latin either in verse or prose, for my intent is by this school specially to increase knowledge and worshipping of God and our Lord Christ Jesu and good Christian life and manners in the children." So he wishes them first to learn the Catechism which he wrote in English, and sundry school books by Erasmus; then certain of the best among the early Christian authors who still used the speech of Tully, Salust and Virgil, before the coming of" that filthiness and all such abuse which the later blind world brought in, which more rather may be called blotterature than literature; [this] I utterly banish and exclude. . . Foreseeing the shifts of time, and considering the wisdom and goodness of the fellowship of Mercers, he leaves it to their discretion to alter and amend his statutes; thus further evincing the broad wisdom of the man who entrusted his school to a Merchants' Guild rather than to any ecclesiastical corporation.

Colet, dying in 1519, had the good fortune to pass away before Englishmen had to take sides between Henry and the pope. His illustrious and somewhat younger friend, Sir Thomas More, suffered death for his conviction that the pope and not Henry VIII was the supreme head of the Church in England. And long before he died, the soul of More must have been riven by some sense of the inconsistency between the ideal radicalism of his Utopia, with its suave tolerance in religion, and the violent language of the later controversial writings of its author and his stern suppression of heresy when Lord Chancellor. To explain this problem of More's possible duality, there may be no need to assume changes in the man himself between early manhood and middle age. The same nature may always have existed in this admirable person; but life's exigencies may have permitted some of his qualities to slumber while they enlisted others in active service, turning potency perhaps to strident fact.

Nature had endowed him with many talents, and circumstance favored their development. Having passed a part of his boyhood in the household of Cardinal Morton, one of Henry VII's ablest and best advisers, he went to Oxford. There he devoted himself to the humanities, and

seems also to have felt the counter yearning for an ascetic religious life. His father, a prominent lawyer, shortly took him from the university, and placed him in the Inns of Court. Not long after, he is found lecturing upon Augustine's City of God, and then acting as a law reader. The religious ascetic instinct still struggled with the duties and opportunities of a temporal career, and for several years he dwelt "religiously without vows" in the Carthusian house of London ("the Charterhouse of London "). On the other hand, his desire to marry was strengthened by the advice of his "ghostly father " Dean Colet, and by pleasing intercourse with the marriageable daughters of an Essex gentleman. The virtuous propriety of More's character was shown in his selection of the elder and less attractive daughter for his wife; fearing to put a slight upon her if he chose her preferable younger sister.

Once married, he applied himself to the duties of his profession and budding public career, still appeasing his ascetic yearning by wearing a hair shirt, which he did not relinquish till he gave it to his daughter Margaret a few days before his death. Elected a member of the Commons at the age of twenty-six, he successfully opposed the King's demand for the ancient feudal aids to knight his eldest son and dower his eldest daughter. In this early action he evinced the moral and physical courage which never was to fail him. Clear-minded, diligent and eloquent, More rapidly rose in his profession, acting as counsel in the notable cases of the time. He was appointed to sundry public offices, attracted the notice of Wolsey and won the favor of the young King Henry VIII. Through him, he was made Privy Councillor, elected speaker of the House, made chancellor of the Duchy of Lancashire, and finally succeeded Wolsey as Lord Chancellor, in the first office of the realm. His administration of the Chancellorship was marked by an extraordinary efficiency and an exceptional probity. For his energy in the suppression of heresy, as well as for his defense of the Catholic Faith in these times which had become parlous, the bishops in Convocation raised a