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An exposition of St. Paul's epistle to the Romans
An exposition of St Paul's epistle to the Romans Author:John Colet Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: in Cambridge we find George Stafford, a Fellow of Pembroke in 1515, afterwards continuing for four years to read a lecture on the Scriptures, " whereas former le... more »cturers in divinity had always read on the Sentences." 1 It is to be observed that the above instances are all of lectures subsequent to those of Colet's, and that they may therefore have been more or less suggested by his. But this is not the point insisted upon. It is not to any originality in beginning a voluntary course, that attention is here called; but to the nature of the subject chosen. It is in this that the strength of Colet's claim lies, to be considered a reformer, in the best sense of the term. For, after comparing his work in this field with that of others before him, one well able to judge has recorded his opinion, that " the inference is plain, that the Public Lecturers, both in the Universities and the Cathedral Churches, took the liberty of reading upon any book rather than upon the Holy Scriptures, till Dr. Colet reformed the practice, and both at Oxford and in St. Paul's brought in the sounder way of reading and expounding the Canonical Epistles of St. Paul."2 t § 5.—Platonic Character Of Colet's Lectures. But it is time that we turned our attention from the circumstances connected with the delivery of these Lectures, to the nature of the Lectures themselves. It will need but a very slight inspection to show how tinctured they are with Platonism. Plato and Plotinus are quoted by name/ and there may be traced, in particular, the influence of a study of the Timceus. Blending with this, we find an admixture of Aristotelian thought, as in the constant reference made to form, not ideas, in relation to matter ; in the mention of a common sense, and the like.4 1 Cooper's Athena Cantdbr. i. p. 39. ...« less