'Love me as ever; and, if you should return to us, count upon my devotion to your service.--Farewell.
'From the country at Stepney, with my mother, who still lives, and wears her advancing age beautifully; often happily and joyfully speaking of you. On the Feast of the Translation of St. Edward.'[619]
II. RECEPTION OF THE 'NOVUM INSTRUMENTUM' IN OTHER QUARTERS (1516).
Colet was not alone in his admiration of the 'Novum Instrumentum' and its author.
[Sidenote: Reception of the 'Novum Instrumentum' in England.]
William Latimer, of Oxford, one of the earliest Greek scholars in England, expressed his ardent approval of the new Latin translation, and would have been glad, he said, if Erasmus had gone still further, and translated even such words as 'sabbatum' and the like into classical Latin.[620]
Warham had all along encouraged Erasmus in his labours, both by presents of money and constant good offices, and now he recommended the 'Novum Instrumentum' to some of his brother bishops and divines, who, he wrote to Erasmus, all acknowledged that the work was worthy of the labour bestowed upon it.[621]
Fox, the Bishop of Winchester, in a large assembly of magnates, when the conversation turned on Erasmus and his works, declared that his new version threw so much light on the New Testament, that it was worth more to him than ten commentaries, and this remark was approved by those present.[622] The Dean of Salisbury used almost the same words of commendation.[623]
In fact, it would appear that in England it was received coldly only by that class of pseudo-orthodox divines, now waning both in numbers and influence, who had consistently opposed the progress of the new learning, 'blasphemed' Colet's school, and censured the heretical tendencies of Erasmus as soon as their blind eyes had been opened to them by the recent edition of the 'Praise of Folly.'
Thus while Erasmus was in England in the autumn, enjoying at Rochester the hospitality of Bishop Fisher, who was Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, he was informed that his 'Novum Testamentum' had encountered no little opposition in some circles at that centre of learning.
In one of his letters from the Bishop's palace to his friend Boville, who was resident at Cambridge, he mentions a report that a decree had been formally issued in one of the colleges, forbidding anyone to bring 'that book' within the precincts of the college, 'by horse or by boat, on wheels or on foot.' He hardly knew, he said, whether to laugh at or to grieve over men 'so studiously blind to their own interests; so morose and implacable, harder to appease even than wild beasts! How pitiful for men to condemn and revile a book which they have not even read, or, having read, cannot understand! They had possibly heard of the new work over their cups, or in the gossip of the market, ... and thereupon exclaimed, "O heavens! O earth! Erasmus has corrected the Gospels!" when it is they themselves who have _depraved_ them....