ABSTRACT
In January 1510 John Colet preached a famous sermon to the Convocation ofClergy from the Canterbury Province in St Paul’s Cathedral in London, wherehe served as dean.1 His text was Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be reformed in the newness of your minds, so that you may discern what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God.” A man steeped in the Bible and one of the leading preachers in England, Colet ripped into his clerical colleagues for their pursuit of honors and benefices, their devotion to sensual pleasures, their entanglement in worldly preoccupations, and especially their selfish avarice: “every corruption, every ruin of the church, every scandal of the world, comes from the avarice of priests.” After berating them for just the sort of conformity to the world that Paul had condemned, he took up the latter’s admonition to reform and renewal, exhorting them to holy uprightness that they might be an example for the clergy and laity in their dioceses. The central problem was not the Church’s teachings or ideals, but persistent inadequacy in living up to them: “The work is therefore not that new laws and constitutions be enacted, but that those enacted be observed.”2
