[194] Ep. 563.
[195] Ep. 600.
[196] Ep. 563.
[197] Ep. 667.
[198] Ep. 501 (Mr. Froude’s translation).
[199] Ep. 793.
[200] Ep. 823.
[201] Ep. 751.
[202] The Pope himself read the Enconium Moriæ and understood the spirit of the author; at least so Erasmus was told. He wrote at the time “the Supreme Pontiff has read through Moriæ and laughed; all he said was, ‘I am glad to see that friend Erasmus is in the Moriæ,’ and this though I have touched no others so sharply as the Pontiffs” (Ep. p. 1667). What Sir Thomas More thought about it may be given in his own words, written some years later. “As touching Moriæ, in which Erasmus, under the name and person of Moria, which word in Greek signifies ‘folly,’ merely touches and reproves such faults and follies as he found in any kind of people pursuing every state and condition, spiritual and temporal, leaving almost none untouched. By this book, says Tyndale, if it were in English, every man should then well see that I was then far otherwise minded than I now write. If this be true, then the more cause have I to thank God for the amendment. God be thanked I never had that mind in my life to have holy saints’ images or their holy relics out of reverence. Nor if there were any such thing in Moriæ this could not make any man see that I were myself of that mind, the book being made by another man though he were my darling never so dear. Howbeit, that book of Moriæ doth indeed but jest upon abuses of such things.… But in these days, in which men by their own default misconstrue and take harm from the very Scripture of God, until men better amend, if any man would now translate Moriæ into English, or some work either that I have myself written ere this, albeit there be no harm therein, folks being (as they be) given to take harm of what is good, I would not only my darling’s books, but my own also, help to burn them both with my own hands, rather than folk should (though through their own fault) take any harm of them.” (English Works, pp. 422-3.)
[203] Opera Omnia (Froben’s ed., 1540), i. p. 831.