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a period of profound peace, with parliamentary subsidies, the enormous fines paid by the clergy to escape the premunire, with annates and firstfruits, which had hitherto rolled a stream of gold to Rome, all turned into the exchequer, the King 'woke up,' after six years, to find himself on the eve of a rebellion, with no funds to meet it, unless he melted his plate and sold his jewels.

These details are not taken from Protestant or from Popish legends, so much deprecated by Mr. Froude; they are not the blind suggestions of malice or envy; they are derived from an authority which Mr. Froude himself will not dispute Cromwell's own correspondence. We do not contend that they present the whole account of the matter, and that Cromwell's character is to be judged by these facts alone, to the exclusion of others: that would be to fall into the fault we condemn. But whether they bear out Mr. Froude's views, and whether an impartial historian ought to have ignored them, our readers can decide for themselves.

344

PASSAGES FROM THE LIFE OF ERASMUS.

April, 1863.

THE Dean of St. Paul's (Dr. Milman) has familiarised his readers with the expression, Latin Christianity.' The phrase is new, and is apt to suggest a distinction that never existed. Had the patriarch of Constantinople succeeded in his opposition to the rival patriarch of the West, had an imperial court overawed by its splendour and authority the humble palace of the Vatican, Greek Christianity (if that be meant as a correlative to Latin) might have found a centre, in which the thousand varying lights of Greek intellect might have converged. But in fact Greek Christianity, as represented by the later Greek fathers, is little more than a feeble reflexion of the Latin. Christianity, strange to say, awakened no responsive chord of the old Greek mind; the poetical and philosophical elements of earlier days sprang up to no second life. Even that logical subtlety which struck such vigorous root in the Latin Church found no place in the Greek. The intellect, language, and leisure of the Greeks would have seemed to point them out as the most suitable guardians and interpreters of the New Testament. And yet, as if to falsify all human anticipations in these matters, the Greek Church produced no expositors comparable to the Latin, Athanasius excepted. The social forms and economy of Christian life are of Latin growth. Our ecclesiastical ceremonies and dresses are

From the National Review for April 1863, under the heading: 1. Unpublished Papers in the Public Record Office. 2. Erasmi Epistolæ.

Latin; our prayers and liturgies are Latin; our translations of the Scripture are from the Latin; our disputes upon cardinal points of doctrine are founded upon Latin words, and guided entirely by our conceptions of their Latin meaning.

Placed in the van of that battle which Christianity had to wage with the new barbarian nationalities of the North, the Latin mind gained new life and vigour from the struggle. If it be true that there are men whose genius, like aromatic herbs, never gives out its fullest sweetness until they are bruised and trampled on, it is equally true that but for these collisions we might have known the old Latin literature in its strength and majesty, but never in its hearselike strains;' never in its more spiritual forms, and that ascetic beauty which haunts and lingers round the memory like a spell. If not the product of the same necessity, at least the most potent aid to that same need, the Latin Church found in the Vulgate an instrument for reaching all hearts and guiding all tongues. For those new races, the founders of the nations of Western Christendom, all their earliest religious impressions were connected with the Vulgate. From the Vulgate all forms of thought took their first direction. What popes and schoolmen never could have done-for securing uniformity of belief and worship; for rooting in the hearts of men the grand idea of one church, one head, one language, binding the old to the new races in unbroken succession, and to him above all who had the keys of death and hell-was done by the silent and irresistible influence of the Vulgate. No wonder, then, that any attack on its authority should have been resisted as a deadly thrust against the very foundation of that system which had grown up with the growth of centuries and entwined itself with every fibre of the heart and imagination of mankind.

It is, then, as the opponent of that authority which till

his time had been held infallible, and for this alone, that Erasmus can be regarded as the precursor of the Reformation. In his jests against the clergy, or rather against the religious orders, the clergy laughed as heartily as himself, secure and heart-sound. It was only when he proceeded to examine the evidence on which the Vulgate rested that they looked grave; when he claimed to apply to the authorised translation of the Scriptures the same rules of criticism as the scholars of his days were applying to Cicero or to Virgil. In this respect his influence on the Reformation was greater than Luther's; as the application of the principles of interpretation introduced by Erasmus must, under more favourable circumstances and in more vigorous hands, lead to consequences more important. At this time, when so much excitement has sprung up on the subject of biblical interpretation, we have thought that an account of this first effort at theological criticism might not be without interest to our readers.

In the year 1509 Erasmus was in Italy, when he received a letter from William Lord Mountjoy, urging his instant return. With more than a significant hint at the parsimony of Henry VII., Mountjoy informed him that the reign of avarice was at an end. Our new king,' he added, 'scatters his treasures with a liberal hand; he is more ambitious of virtue and renown than of gold or precious stones.' Considering the numerous attractions which Italy had for Erasmus, it might have been thought that such an invitation, though backed by a present of 51. from Archbishop Warham, and as much more from Mountjoy himself, would not have proved very seductive. The climate of Italy, its brilliant skies, its books and antiquities, its libraries and learned societies, were exactly suited to a scholar and valetudinarian. Erasmus was fastidious in his diet. He could not endure the sour wines or sourer beer of

our northern latitudes. The stoves of Germany and the winters of England filled him with dismay. But though Erasmus might care for Italy, Italy probably did not care much for Erasmus. Italian scholars, the arbiters of literary distinction, were not prepared to admit him into their exclusive circle. They were not satisfied that his Latin style smacked of the true Ciceronian flavour. Nor was Erasmus backward in expressing his contempt for their fastidiousness. He ridiculed their slavish imitation of Cicero, their utter ignorance of all authors beyond their one acknowledged idol, their tumid eloquence and shallow conceits. From the warlike Julius, whom he hated for his roughness, he received no notice; Leo X., whom he had known as a student, was condescending, but offered no substantial favour. From chagrin or other causes his health had suffered in Italy; he hastened to accept the invitation of Mountjoy.

The tediousness of the journey was relieved by casting into form the scenes he had just abandoned; the impressions made on his mind by Roman society may be seen in his 'Praise of Folly.' Arriving in London he took up his abode with Sir Thomas More. Courted and caressed by all who had attained, or were ambitious of attaining distinction, there was no post in the State to which he might not have aspired; no position in the Church which was not open to him. There is no country,' he boasts in one of his letters, 'which would not gladly entertain me-Spain, Italy, England, or Scotland. When I was at Rome, there was no cardinal that would not have received me with open arms as a brother. In England,' he continues, there is not a bishop who does not think it an honour to be noticed by me, who is not anxious to secure me at his table; who would not gladly retain me in his household. The king himself (Henry VIII.), a little before his father's death, sent me, when I was in Italy, most loving letters, written with his

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