THE SCANDAL OF RELIGIONauthors to criticize and insult each other. He cautions printers to ‘‘hasten slowly’’ in
printing slanderous books.^9 Erasmus promoted an ethical way of using language—one
that implied at once a plenitude of styles, traditions, and convictions, and a form of
sophisticated linguistic self-control.
In his 1525 tractThe Tongue, Erasmus describes in detail the forms of linguistic use
that he considers excessive. As the title indicates, he sees language, embodied in the
tongue, that agile ‘‘lump of flesh,’’ as able to act on its own and speech as a speech act
that has specific moral consequences. Speaking and, by extension, writing can have bene-
ficial or harmful effects, the latter arising from the essential slipperiness of speech, since,
much to Erasmus’s regret, speech can never fully avoid being in a state of excess. When
language thus lapses into excess and into unreason, the outcome is never a good one, for
Erasmus believes that nothing can stop it from continuing to slip fromstultitiatomalitia,
from foolish chatter to deliberately evil usage, such as lying, flattery, manipulation of
opinion, perjury, sedition, slander, whispering, blasphemy, heretical teachings, and cal-
umny. Because of the numerous ways in which language transgresses the boundaries of
reason, Erasmus’s unrelenting struggle with linguistic excess is also a never-ending one:
but the tongue of man no man can tame. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
With the tongue we praise our God and Father, and with the same we abuse men
who have been made in the image and likeness of God. From the same mouth come
forth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so. Does a
fountain send through the same passage sweet and bitter water? Can the fig tree, my
brethren, bear grapes, or the vine figs? So neither can salt water yield sweet. And yet
we think ourselves splendidly scrupulous with our Pharisaical pretences, while we
carry with us the fire of hell in our tongues, when we say one thing seated and
another standing, and when we constantly turn our tongue into more forms than
any polypus can take on.^10Although these words are obliquely aimed at the duplicitous practices of Erasmus’s Cath-
olic critics, in his debate with Luther concerning the will Erasmus has no other argument
to use against Luther than the same one of linguistic excess.
Erasmus’s disagreement with Luther is a good example of minimal doctrinal differ-
ences slipping into an irreconcilable disagreement. Doctrine was not the principal bone
of contention between the two prominent scholars, each of whom had originally sought
the other’s alliance. When Erasmus initiates the debate with the publication ofDe libero
arbitrio(1524), even though he defends the Church’s position on the issue of the will, he
presents his theological position in the weakest possible form. Luther holds that individual
freedom amounts to nothing; in Erasmus’s view, it amounts to ‘‘almost nothing.’’ Eras-
mus’s responses to Luther (he produced two more sizable books,Hyperaspistes IandII)
became increasingly impatient, however. Humanist studies and, in particular, the Chris-
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