Page images
PDF
EPUB

CHAP. V..

PART II.

His own language and that of his

implies a sense of

failure.

Nevertheless, judging from his own account and from the silence of contemporaries, it must be admitted that Erasmus appears to have regarded his sojourn at Cambridge as a biographers failure, and the language used by his different biographers implies apparently, that such was also their opinion. He had almost totally failed to gather round him a circle of learners in any way worthy of his great reputation; respecting his lectures, as divinity professor, not a single tradition remains; while so completely were his efforts, as a teacher of Greek, ignored by the university, that on the occasion of Richard Croke (his virtual successor in this respect) being appointed to the office of public orator a few years later, the latter was honored by admission to certain special privileges, expressly on the ground that he had been the first introducer of Greek into the university'. But on a careful examination rather than of the tendencies perceptible within a short time after Erasmus's departure, we shall probably be inclined to infer that his failure was far more apparent than real; and even to believe, that if the impulsive, sensitive scholar could have abided his time, he might have been rewarded by the realisation of substantial success, and have for ever directly associated his name with the most important movement that Cambridge has ever originated. It is certain, that in the years immediately following upon his residence, we are met by indications of a mental and speculative activity that is almost startling when compared with the lethargy that had reigned only a few years before, and we can have no hesitation in assigning his Novum Instrumentum as the centre round which that activity mainly revolved.

His failure

apparent

real.

His Novum Instrumentum.

The Novum Instrumentum2 of Erasmus, appeared, as is

England at large, we can ask for no
more favorable verdict than the fol-
lowing:-'ubi favore principum reg.
nant bonæ litteræ, viget honesti
studium, exsulat aut jacet, cum fu-
cata personataque sanctimonia, futilis
et insulsa doctrina quondam ἀπαιδεύ-
τως πεπαιδευμένων. Letter to Richard
Pace (A.D. 1517), Opera, 111 237.

1

-'quia ille primus invexit litteras ad nos Græcas.' Stat. Ant. p 112.

2 Novum Instrumentum omne, diligenter ab Erasmo Roterodamo recognitum et emendatum, non solum ad Græcam veritatem, verum etiam ad multorum utriusque linguæ codicum, eorumque veterum simul et emendatorum fidem, postremo ad probatissimorum autorum citationem, emendationem, et interpretationem, præcipue, Origenis, Chrysostomi, Cyrilli, Vulgarii, Hieronymi, Cypriani, Ambrosii,

of his work in

of English

Brewer's

well known to every scholar, from the printing press of CHAP. V. Frobenius at Basel, on the 1st of March, 1516; but, as Pro- PART II fessor Brewer observes, 'it was strictly the work of his resi- The outcome dence in England' (that is at Cambridge). In the collation England and and examination of manuscripts required for the task, he had patronage. the assistance of Englishmen; Englishmen supplied the funds, and English friends and patrons lent him that support and encouragement without which it is very doubtful whether Erasmus would ever have completed the work....The experi- Professor ment was a bold one, the boldest that had been conceived criticism. in this century or for many centuries before it. We are accustomed to the freest expression of opinion in Biblical criticism, and any attempt to supersede our English version, to treat its inaccuracies with scorn, to represent it as far below the science and scholarship of the age, or as a barbarous, unlettered production, made from inaccurate manuscripts, and imperfectly executed by men who did not understand the language of the original, would excite little apprehension or alarm. To explain the text of Scripture exclusively by the rules of human wisdom, guided by the same principles as are freely applied to classical authors,-to discriminate the spurious from the genuine, and decide that this was canonical, and that was not,-might, perhaps, be regarded as audacious. Yet all this, and not less than this, did Erasmus propose to himself in his edition and translation of the New Testament. He meant to subvert the authority of the Vulgate, and to shew that much of the popular theology of the day, its errors and misconceptions, were founded entirely on a misapprehension of the original meaning, and inextricably

Hilarii, Augustini, una cum annotationibus quæ lectorem doceant, quid qua ratione mutatum sit. Quisquis igitur amas veram theologiam, lege, cognosce, et deinde judica. Neque statim offendere, si quid mutatum offenderis, sed expende, num in melius mutandum sit.' Erasmus preferred the word Instrumentum to Testamentum on the ground that it more fittingly expressed the deed or written document containing the Testament, and he defended his preference by citing

the authority of both Augustine and
Jerome :-Nec intelligunt ad eum
modum aliquoties loqui divum Hiero-
nymum, nec legisse videntur Augus-
tinum, qui docet aptius dici Instrumen-
tum quam Testamentum. Idque veris-
simum est, quoties non de re, sed de
voluminibus verba fiunt. Nam Testa-
mentum esset, etiamsi nullum ex-
staret scriptum: quum enim Do-
minus diceret, "Hic est calix Novi
Testamenti," nullus erat liber Novi
Testamenti proditus.' Opera, III 1006.

PART II.

CHAP. V. entangled with the old Latin version. It was his avowed object to bring up the translation of the sacred books, and all criticism connected with them, to the level of that scholarship in his day which had been successfully applied to the illustration of ancient authors; to set aside all rules of interpretation resting merely on faith and authority, and replace them by the philological and historical. And it was precisely for this reason that Luther disliked the work. In this respect the New Testament of Erasmus must be regarded as the foundation of that new school of teaching on which Anglican theology professes exclusively to rest; as such it is not only the type of its class, but the most direct enunciation of that Protestant principle which, from that time until this, has found its expression in various forms: "The Bible alone is the religion of Protestants." Whatever can be read therein or proved thereby, is binding upon all men; what cannot, is not to be required of any man as an article of his faith, either by societies or by individuals. Who sees not that the authority of the Church was displaced, and the sufficiency of all men individually to read and interpret for themselves was thus asserted by the New Testament of Erasmus'?'

Defects and errors in the work.

If from the foregoing general estimate of the influence of the work, we turn to the consideration of its abstract merits, we may discern, from the vantage-ground of three centuries of progressive biblical criticism, more clearly than either bishop Fisher or bishop Lee, its merits and defects. Nor is it possible to deny the existence of numerous and occasionally serious errors and shortcomings. The oldest manuscript to which Erasmus had access, was probably not earlier than the tenth century; the typographical inaccuracies are frequent; the very title-page contains a glaring and singularly discreditable blunder2; he even shews such ignorance of ancient

1 Preface to Letters and Papers, vol. II pp. cclxiv-v.

24 This was the mention, in the list of the Fathers whose works had been used in the preparation of the text' (see note 2, p. 508), of Vulgarius, a writer no one had ever heard of before. The mistake arose in

the following way. Erasmus had a copy of Theophylact on Matthew, with this title: Τοῦ Θεοφιλεστάτου 'Αρ χιεπισκόπου Βουλγαρίας κυρίου Θεοφυ λάκτου ἐξήγησις εἰς τὸ κατὰ Ματθαῖ ον Ευαγγέλιον. In his haste he took copuλákTov for an epithet, while for Βουλγαρίας he must have read Βουλγα

PART II.

merit.

geography as to assert that Neapolis, the port where the CHAP. V. apostle Paul arrived on his journey from Samothrace to Philippi, was a town in Caria; and even in subsequent editions, he stubbornly maintained, in opposition to his critics, that the Herodians mentioned by St. Matthew were the soldiers of Herod the Great! But even errors like these Its great become trifling, when weighed in the balance against the substantial service nevertheless rendered to the cause of biblical studies,-the conscientious labour,-the courageous spirit of the criticisms,—the scholarly sagacity which singles out the Gospel by St. Luke as superior to the others in the purity of its Greek, which discerns the peculiar mannerism of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and detects the discrepancies in the quotations from the Septuagint.

ter to Eras

13, 1516.

On the 13th of the August following the appearance of Bullock's letthe work, Bullock wrote from Cambridge to inform his old pre-mus; Aug. ceptor how matters were there progressing, and his report was certainly encouraging. Greek was being studied at the university with considerable ardour; the Novum Instrumentum was in high favour; and Erasmus's Cambridge friends would be only too glad to see him among them once more1. It is evident indeed that by all, whose good opinion was most worth having, Erasmus's performance, even on its first appearance, was regarded as a highly meritorious achievement. Fisher Favorable had throughout steadily promoted the scheme. Warham was the Norun emphatic in his praise. Fox,-whose opinion on such a tim, among subject carried perhaps as much weight as that of any living Englishman,-publicly declared, in a large assembly, that he valued Erasmus's labours more than those of any ten com

plov, which he converted from the name of a country into the name of a man, and translated "Vulgarius"; and under this name Theophylact was quoted in his notes. To make matters worse, he attributed to Vulgarius a reading which is not to be found in Theophylact, and in one place grossly misconstrued him.' See an article, The Greek Testament of Erasmus, by R.B. Drummond. Theological Review v. 527.

1 Tuus in Angliam reditus, pre

ceptor doctissime, est omnibus amicis
tuis Cantabrigianis oppido quam gra-
tus: super ceteros tamen mihi longe
gratissimus, utpote qui aliis omnibus
sum tibi multis partibus devinctior...
Hic acriter incumbunt litteris Græcis,
optantque non mediocriter tuum ad-
ventum: et hi magnopere favent huic
tuæ in Novum Testamentum editioni:
dii boni, quam eleganti, argutæ, ac
omnibus sani gustus suaviac perneces-
saria!' Opera, ш 197.

reception of

Instrumen

influential

men.

PART II.

Leo x ac

cepts the dedication.

CHAP. V. mentators'. Cuthbert Tunstall, just created Master of the Rolls, was an avowed patron of the undertaking. The fact indeed that the dedication of the work had been accepted by Leo x, might alone seem sufficient to disarm the prejudices of the most bigoted. But the suspicions of the theologians were not thus to be lulled to sleep; and in Erasmus's reply to the foregoing letter from Bullock, dated Aug. 31, we find that he had already become informed of the manifestation at Counter de Cambridge of a very different spirit from that which Bullock had reported. In the Novum Instrumentum the opponents of Greek had recognised, as they believed, the opportunity for which they had long been watching; and having now more definite ground whereon to take their stand, they were endeavouring by mere force of numerical superiority to overwhelm the party of reform.

monstrations

at Cam

bridge.

It would however be unjust not to admit, that the opponents of the work had more definite grounds for their hostility than a mere general aversion to the special culture with which that work was identified, and that their opposition was not, as Erasmus himself alleged, commenced and carried on in utter ignorance of the contents of the volume. Merits and defects like those to which we have already adverted, lay, it is true, somewhat beyond the range of their criticism; but there was in the commentary another feature, which Sarcastic al- touched them far more closely, and this was the frequent commentary application, which the sarcastic scholar had 'taken occasion Instrumen to make (often with considerable irrelevance and generally without necessity) of particular texts to the prevailing abuses The secular of the times. For example, he had progressed no further than the third chapter of St. Matthew, before he contrived to find occasion for dragging in a slur upon the whole all attacked. priestly order2; in commenting on Matt. xv. 5, he censures

lusions in the

of the Nov.

tum.

clergy, the monks and mendicants and the

schoolmen

1 'Wintoniensis episcopus, vir ut scis prudentissimus, in celeberrimo cœtu magnatum, quum de te ac tuis lucubrationibus incidisset sermo, testatus est omnibus approbantibus, versionem tuam Novi Testamenti, vice esse sibi commentariorum decem, tantum afferre lucis.' Opera, 111 1650.

2 It is when speaking of the MSS. of the Gospels to which he had had access at the College of St. Donatian at Bruges. 'Habebat ea bibliotheca,' he goes on to say, 'complures alios libros antiquitatis venerandæ, qui neglectu quorundam perierunt, ut nunc ferme sunt sacerdotum mores

« PreviousContinue »