n a vivid realization of the person of Christ. In the prominence which
such a view gave to the moral life, in his free criticism of the earlier
Scriptures, in his tendency to simple forms of doctrine and confessions of
faith, Colet struck the keynote of a mode of religious thought as strongly
in contrast with that of the later Reformation as with that of Catholicism
itself. The allegorical and mystical theology on which the Middle Ages had
spent their intellectual vigour to such little purpose fell before his
rejection of all but the historical and grammatical sense of the Biblical
text. In his lectures on the Romans we find hardly a single quotation from
the Fathers or the scholastic teachers. The great fabric of belief built
up by the mediaeval doctors seemed to him simply "the corruptions of the
Schoolmen." In the life and sayings of its Founder he saw a simple and
rational Christianity, whose fittest expression was the Apostles' creed.
"About the rest," he said with characteristic impatience, "let divines
dispute as they will." Of his attitude towards the coarser aspects of the
current religion his behaviour at a later time before the famous shrine of
St. Thomas at Canterbury gives us a rough indication. As the blaze of its
jewels, its costly sculptures, its elaborate metal-work burst on Colet's
view, he suggested with bitter irony that a saint so lavish to the poor in
his lifetime would certainly prefer that they should possess the wealth
heaped round him since his death. With petulant disgust he rejected the
rags of the martyr which were offered for his adoration and the shoe which
was offered for his kiss. The earnestness, the religious zeal, the very
impatience and want of sympathy with the past which we see in every word
and act of the man burst out in the lectures on St. Paul's Epistles which
he delivered at Oxford in 1497. Even to the most critical among his
hearers he seemed "like one inspired, raised in voice, eye, his whole
countenance and mien, out of himself."

[Sidenote: Erasmus]

Severe as was the outer life of the new teacher, a severity marked by his
plain black robe and the frugal table which he preserved amidst his later
dignities, his lively conversation, his frank simplicity, the purity and
nobleness of his life, even the keen outbursts of his troublesome temper,
endeared him to a group of scholars, foremost among whom stood Erasmus and
Thomas More. "Greece has crossed the Alps," cried the exile