the establishment and the adjoining stable. The "Ichthyophagia" is a dialogue between a butcher
and a fishmonger, and exposes the Pharisaical tendency to strain out a gnat and to swallow a camel,
and to lay heavy burdens on others. "Would they might eat nothing but garlic who imposed these
fish-days upon us!" "Would they might starve to death who force the necessity of fasting upon free
men!" The form of the dialogue furnished the author a door of escape from the charge of heresy,
for he could not be held responsible for the sentiments of fictitious characters; moreover, he said,
his object was to teach Latin, not theology. Nevertheless, the Sorbonne condemned the "Colloquies,"
and the Inquisition placed them in the first class of prohibited books.
The numerous letters of Erasmus and to Erasmus throw much light upon contemporaneous
literary and ecclesiastical history, and make us best acquainted with his personality. He corresponded
with kings and princes, popes and cardinals, as well as with scholars in all parts of Europe. He tells
us that he wrote sometimes forty letters in a day.^521
III. Theological works. The edition of the Greek Testament, with a new Latin version and
brief annotations, and the independent paraphrases, are the most important contributions of Erasmus
to exegesis, and have appeared in very many editions. The paraphrastic form of commenting, which
briefly explains the difficulties, and links text and notes in continuous composition, so as to make
the writer his own interpreter,^522 was a great benefit to the incipient scholarship of his day, and
facilitated a more general spread of the New Testament, which he eloquently defended. He did not
penetrate into the deeper meaning of the Scriptures, but he made the surface more intelligible by
the moonlight of philology and refined culture. His Paraphrases cover the whole New Testament,
except the Apocalypse, and fill the seventh volume of Le Clerk’s edition of his works. A translation
was published in two volumes folio, in black-letter, at London, 1551, and appointed, by public
authority, to be placed in all the parish churches of England.
His "Method of True Theology" (Ratio verae Theologiae)^523 was prefixed to his first edition
of the Greek Testament, and afterwards expanded and separately published, and dedicated to
Cardinal-Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz (1519), in a preface full of complaints over the evil times
of violent controversy, which, in his judgment, destroyed charity and the peaceful cultivation of
learning and practical piety. He maintains that the first requisite for the study of the Scriptures is
a knowledge of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. Nor are poetry and good letters to be neglected. Christ
clothes his teaching in poetic parables; and Paul quotes from the poets, but not from Aristotle.
The Enchiridion Militis Christiani,^524 first published at Louvain, 1501 (or 1503),^525 and
translated into several languages, is a treatise on practical piety in its conflict with the Devil and
unruly passions. The author borrows his weapons from the Scriptures, the fathers, and the Greek
(^521) The Epistolae in Froben’s ed. of 1540, Tom. III. fol. (1213 pp.), with his preface, dated Freiburg, 1529; in Le Clerk’s ed., Tom. III.
Pars I. and II. There is also a fine edition of the collected epistles of Erasmus, Melanchthon, Thomas More, and Lud. Vives, London,
1642, 2 vols. fol. 2146 and 116 pages, with a good portrait of Erasmus (a copy in the Union Seminary). Recent additions have been made
by Horawitz (Erasmiana, 1883 sqq.). Jortin and Drummond give many extracts from the epistles.
(^522) Erasmus well defines it in the dedicatory preface ad Card. Grimanum, before the Pauline Epistles: "hiantia committere, abrupta
mollire, confusa digerere, evoluta evolvere, nodosa explicare, obscuris lucem addere, hebraismum romana civitate donare ... et ita
temperareπαράφρασινne fiatπαραφρόνησις, h. e. sic aliter dicere ut non dicas alia."
(^523) Opera, vol. V. 57 sqq.
(^524) Usually translated "The Manual of a Christian Soldier;" but ἐγχειρίδιονmeans also a dagger, and he himself explains it, "Enchiridion,
hoc est, pugiunculum."Op. V. 1-65. The first English translation (1533) is believed to be by William Tyndale, the translator of the New
Testament. Another, with notes, which I have before me, is by Philip Wyatt Crowther, Esq., London, 1816, under the title "The Christian’s
Manual," etc.
(^525) On the disputed date see Drummond, I. 122.