The 'Novum Instrumentum' of Erasmus was at once the result and the embodiment of these views.
Hence it is easy to see the significance of the concurrent publication of the works of St. Jerome. St. Jerome belonged to that school of theology and criticism which now, after the lapse of a thousand years, Colet and Erasmus were reviving in Western Europe. St. Jerome was the father who in his day strove to give to the people the Bible in their vulgar tongue. St. Jerome was the father against whom St. Augustine so earnestly strove to vindicate the verbal inspiration of the Bible. It was the words of St. Augustine used against St. Jerome that, now after the lapse of ten centuries, Martin Dorpius had quoted against Erasmus. We have seen in an earlier chapter how Colet clung to St. Jerome's opinion, against that of nearly all other authorities, in the discussion which led to his first avowal to Erasmus of his views on the inspiration of the Scriptures. Finally, the Annotations to the 'Novum Instrumentum' teem with citations from St. Jerome.
The concurrent publication of the works of this father was therefore a practical vindication of the 'Novum Instrumentum' from the charge of presumption and novelty. It proved that Colet and Erasmus were teaching no new doctrines--that their work was correctly defined by Colet himself to be 'to restore that old and true theology which had been so long obscured by the subtleties of the Schoolmen.'
Under this patristic shield, dedicated by permission to Pope Leo, and its copyright secured for four years by the decree of the Emperor Maximilian, the 'Novum Instrumentum' went forth into the world.
I. MORE IMMERSED IN PUBLIC BUSINESS (1515).
While the work of Erasmus had for some years past lain chiefly in the direction of laborious literary study, it had been far otherwise with More. His lines had fallen among the busy scenes and cares of practical life. His capacity for public business, and the diligence and impartiality with which he had now for some years discharged his judicial duties as under-sheriff, had given him a position of great popularity and influence in the city. He had been appointed by the Parliament of 1515 a Commissioner of Sewers--a recognition at least of his practical ability. In his private practice at the Bar he had risen to such eminence, that Roper tells us 'there was at that time in none of the prince's courts of the laws of this realm any matter of importance in controversy wherein he was not with the one party of counsel.'[535] Roper further reports that 'by his office and his learning (as I have heard him say) he gained without grief not so little as 400_l._ by the year' (equal to 4,000_l._ a year in present money). He had in the meantime married a second wife, Alice Middleton, and taken her daughter also into his household; and thus tried, for the sake of his little orphans, to roll away the cloud of domestic sorrow from his home.