"There are those who worship certain divinities with certain rites. One salutes Christopher every day, but only while he is gazing upon his image, and for what? because he has persuaded himself that he will thus be safe for that day from an evil death. Another worships a certain Rochus, and why? because he fancies he will drive the plague away from his body. Another mumbles prayers to Barbara or George, lest he fall into the hands of his enemy. This man fasts to Apollonia to prevent the toothache. That one gazes upon an image of the god-like Job, that he may be free of the itch. Some devote a certain part of their profits to the poor, lest their business go to wreck. A candle is lighted to Jerome to rescue some business that is going to pieces. In short, whatever our fears and our desires, we set so many gods over them and these are different in different nations; as, for example, Paul does for the French what Jerome does for our people, and James and John are not good everywhere for what they can do in certain places. Now this kind of piety, unless it be brought back to Christ instead of being merely a care for the convenience or inconvenience of our bodies, is not Christian, for it is not far removed from the superstition of those who used to vow tithes to Hercules in order to get rich—or a cock to Æsculapius to get well of an illness, or who slew a bull to Neptune for a favourable voyage. The names are changed, but the object is the same. You pray to God to escape a sudden death and not rather that he may grant you a better mind, so that whenever death overtakes you it may not find you unprepared. You never think of changing your way of life and yet you pray God to let you live. What then are you asking?—why, only that you may keep on sinning as long as possible. You pray for wealth and know not how to use wealth; so you are praying for your own ruin. If you pray for health and then abuse it, is not your piety impious?
"An objection will be made here by some 'religious' fellows, who look upon piety as a profession, or, in other words, by certain sweet phrases of blessing seduce the souls of the innocent, serving their own bellies and not Jesus Christ: 'What,' they will say, 'do you forbid the worship of the saints, in whom God is honoured?' Indeed I do not so much condemn those who do this from a certain simple superstition as those who, seeking their own profit, put forth things that might perhaps be tolerated with pure and lofty piety, but encourage for their own advantage the ignorance of the common people. This ignorance I do not in the least despise, but I cannot bear to have them taking indifferent things for the most important, the least for the greatest. I will even approve their asking Rochus for a life of health if they will consecrate their life to Christ; but I should like it still better if they would simply pray that their love of virtue may be increased through their hatred of vice. Let them lay their living and dying in God's hands, and say with Paul 'whether we live or whether we die, we live or die to the Lord.' ... I will bear with weakness, but, like Paul, I will show you a more excellent way."
It will be noticed that even thus early in Erasmus' moral appeal, he does not aim at destroying anything. Even for the worship of saints he has plenty of room in his thought, but he says:[58]
"the way to worship the saints is to imitate their virtues. The saint cares more for this kind of reverence than if you burn a hundred candles for him. You think it a great thing to be borne to your grave in the cowl of Francis; but the likeness of his garment will profit you nothing after you are dead, if your morals were unlike his when you were alive.... You pay the greatest reverence to the ashes of Paul, and no harm if your own religion is consistent with this. But if you adore these dead and silent ashes and neglect that image of him which lives and speaks and, as it were, breathes to this day in his writings, is not your religion preposterous? You worship the bones of Paul laid away in a shrine, but you do not worship the mind of Paul enshrined in his writings. You make great things of a scrap of his body seen through a glass case, but you do not marvel at the whole soul of Paul that gleams through his works.... Let infidels, for whom they were given, wonder at these signs, but do you, a believer, embrace the books of that man, so that, while you doubt not that God is able to do all things, you may learn to love Him above all things. You honour an image of the face of Christ, badly cut in stone or painted in colours, but far more honour ought to be given to that image of his soul which by the work of the Holy Spirit is made manifest in the Gospels.... You gaze with awe upon a tunic or a handkerchief said to be those of Christ, but you fall asleep over the oracles of the law of Christ."
With constant reference to Paul as the greatest of human teachers, Erasmus comes to the monastic life in some detail.[59]
"'Love,' says Paul, 'is to edify your neighbour,' and if only this were done, nothing could be more joyous or more easy than the life of the 'religious'; but now this life seems gloomy, full of Jewish superstitions, not in any way free from the vices of laymen and in some ways more corrupt. If Augustine, whom they boast of as the founder of their system, were to come to life again, he would not recognise them; he would cry out that he had never approved this sort of a life, but had organized a way of living according to the rule of the apostles, not according to the superstition of the Jews. But now I hear some of the more sensible ones say:—'We must be on our guard in the least things lest we gradually slip into greater vices.' I hear and I approve; but we ought none the less to be on our guard lest we get so bound up in these lesser things that we wholly fall away from the greater. The danger is plainer on that side, but greater on this. Look out for Scylla, but do not fall into Charybdis. To do those things is well, but to put your trust in them is perilous. Paul does not forbid us to make use of the 'elements,' but he would not have the man who is free in Christ made a slave to them. He does not condemn the law of works, but would have it properly applied. Without these things you will perchance not be a pious man, but it is not these that make you pious....
"What, then, shall the Christian do? Shall he neglect the commands of the Church, despise the honourable traditions of the Fathers, and condemn pious observances? Nay, if he is a weakling he will hold on to these as necessary; if he is strong and perfect, he will observe them so much the more, lest through his wisdom he offend his weak brother, and slay him for whom Christ died. These things he ought to do and not leave the others undone.... Your body is clothed with the monkish cowl; what, then, if your soul wears an earthly garment? If the outer man is veiled in a snowy tunic, let also the vestment of the inner man be white like snow. You keep silence outwardly; see to it so much the more that your mind within is fixed in silent attention. You bend the knee of the body in the visible temple; but that is nothing if in the temple of the heart you are standing upright against God. You adore the wood of the cross;—follow much more the mystery of the cross. Do you go into a fast and abstain from those things which do not defile the man and yet not refrain from obscene conversation which defiles both your own conscience and that of others? Food is withheld from the body and shall the soul gorge itself upon the husks of the swine? You build a temple of stone; you have places sacred to religion; what profits it if the temple of the soul, whose wall Ezekiel dug through, is profaned with the abominations of the Egyptians?... If the body be kept pure and yet you are covetous, then the soul is polluted. You sing psalms with your bodily lips, but listen within to what your soul is saying: you are blessing with the mouth and cursing with the heart. Bodily you are bound within a narrow cell, but with your thoughts you wander over the wide earth. You hear the word of God with your bodily ear: hear it rather within."
So much for the monks. As to the general moral standards of his day Erasmus is equally clear and vigorous and is interesting especially from the comparison he makes with the morals of ancient times.[60]
"Turn the annals of the ancients," he bursts out, "and compare the manners of our time. When was true honour less respected? When were riches, no matter how gained, ever so highly esteemed? In what age was ever that word of Horace[61] more true—
'A dowried wife, friends, beauty, birth, fair fame,