[184] Ep. 477.
[185] Ep. 528.
[186] Ep. 656.
[187] Ep. 334 (second series.)
[188] Spongia (Basle, Froben, 1523), c. 5.
[189] Ibid., sig. d. 4.
[190] Ibid., sig. e. 2.
[191] Ibid., sig. e. 2. The supreme authority of the Pope is asserted by Erasmus in numberless places in his works. For example, in the tract Pacis Querimonia, after saying that he cannot understand how Christians, who understand Christ’s teaching and say their Pater noster with intelligence, can always be at strife, he proceeds: “The authority of the Roman Pontiff is supreme. But when peoples and princes wage impious wars, and that for years, where then is the authority of the Pontiffs, where then is the power next to Christ’s power?” &c. (Opera., tom. iv. p. 635). So too in his Precatio pro Pace Ecclesiæ, after praying that God would turn the eyes of His mercy upon the Church, over which “Peter was made Supreme Pastor,” he declares that there is but “one Church, out of which there is no salvation.”
[192] Ep. 478.
[193] Ep. 501.