and satire which he shared with Lucian, he sometimes came near the line of profanity. Moreover,
he had a decidedly skeptical vein, and in the present century he would probably be a moderate
Rationalist.
With his critical faculty he saw the difficulties and differences in the human surroundings
and circumstances of the Divine Scriptures. He omitted in his Greek Testament the forgery of the
three witnesses, 1 John 5:7, and only inserted it under protest in the third edition (1522), because
he had rashly promised to do so if a single Greek MS. could be found to contain it.^510 He doubted
the genuineness of the pericope of the adulteress (John 8:1–11), though he retained it in the text.
He disputed the orthodox punctuation of Rom. 9:5. He rejected the Pauline origin of Hebrews, and
questioned the Johannean authorship of the Apocalypse. He judged Mark to be an abridgment of
Matthew. He admitted lapses of memory and errors of judgment in the Apostles. He denied any
other punishment in hell except "the perpetual anguish of mind which accompanies habitual sin."
As to the Lord’s Supper, he said, when asked his opinion by the magistrate of Basel about the book
of Oecolampadius and his figurative interpretation,^511 that it was learned, eloquent, well written,
and pious, but contrary to the general belief of the church from which it was dangerous to depart.
There is good reason to believe that he doubted transubstantiation. He was also suspected of leaning
to Arianism, because he summed up the reaching of Scripture on the Trinity in this sentence: "The
Father is very frequently called God, the Son sometimes, the Holy Spirit never;" and he adds: "Many
of the fathers who worshiped the Son with the greatest piety, yet scrupled to use the word
homoousion, which is nowhere to be found in Holy Scripture."^512 He moderated the doctrine of
hereditary sin, and defended human freedom in his notes on Romans. He emphasized the moral,
and depreciated the doctrinal, element in Christianity. He deemed the Apostles’ Creed sufficient,
and was willing to allow within this limit freedom for theological opinions. "Reduce the number
of dogmas," he advised Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, "to a minimum; you can do it without injury
to Christianity; on other points, leave every one free to believe what he pleases; then religion will
take hold on life, and you can correct the abuses of which the world justly complains."
He had a high opinion of the morality and piety of the nobler heathen, such as Socrates,
Cicero, and Plutarch. "The Scriptures," he says in his Colloquies, "deserve, indeed, the highest
authority; but I find also in the writings of the ancient heathen and in the poets so much that is pure,
holy and divine, that I must believe that their hearts were divinely moved. The spirit of Christ is
perhaps more widely diffused than we imagine, and many will appear among the saints who are
not in our catalogue."^513 Then, after quoting from Cicero and Socrates, he says, "I can often hardly
restrain myself from exclaiming, ’Holy Socrates, pray for us.’ "
The same liberal sentiments we find among the early Greek fathers (Justin Martyr, Clement
of Alexandria, Origen), and in Zwingli.
(^510) ... "ne cui sit ansa calumniandi. Tametsi suspicor codicem illum ad nostros esse correctum."—Opera, VI. 1080. The Codex
Montfortianus, now in Dublin, was probably written between 1519-1522, and the disputed passage interpolated with the purpose of
injuring the reputation of Erasmus. See J. R. Harris, The Origin of the Leicester Codex of the N. Test., London and Cambridge, 1887, p.
46 sqq.
(^511) De genuina verborum Domini: Hoc est corpus meum, etc., juxta vetustissimos auctores expositione liber. Basil., 1525.
(^512) .. See the Preface to his edition of St. Hilary on the Trinity, published at Basel, 1523.
(^513) "Fortasse latius se fundit spiritus Christi quam nos interpretamur, et multi sunt in consortio sanctorum qui non sunt apud nos in
catalogo."—Coll., in the conversation entitled Convivium Religiosum.