‘You may say in reply, “I do not want you to change anything in your codices, nor that you should believe that the Latin version is a false one. I only point out what discrepancies I discover between the Greek and Latin copies, and what harm is there in that?” In very deed, my dear Erasmus, there is great harm in it. Because, about this matter of the integrity of the Holy Scriptures many will dispute, many will doubt, if they learn that even one jot or tittle in them is false, ... and then will come to pass what Augustine described to Jerome: “If any error should be admitted to have crept into the Holy Scriptures, what authority would be left to them?” All these considerations, my dear Erasmus, have induced me to pray and beseech you, by our mutual friendship, by your wonted courtesy and candour, either to limit your corrections to those passages only of the New Testament in which you are able, without altering the sense, to substitute more expressive words; or if you should point out that the sense requires any alteration at all, that you will reply to the foregoing arguments in your preface.’
Erasmus replies to Dorpius.
Erasmus replied to this letter of Dorpius with singular tact, and reprinted the letter itself with his reply.
He acknowledged the friendship of Dorpius, and the kind and friendly tone of his letter. He received, he said, many flattering letters, but he had rather receive such a letter as this, of honest advice and criticism, by far. He was knocked up by sea-sickness, wearied by long travel on horseback, busy unpacking his luggage; but still he thought it was better, he said, to send some reply, rather than allow his friend to remain under such erroneous impressions, whether the result of his own consideration, or instilled into him by others, who had over-persuaded him into writing this letter, and thus made a cat’s-paw of him, in order to light their battles without exposure of their own persons.
He told him freely how and when the ‘Praise of Folly’ was written, and what were his reasons for writing it, frankly and courteously replying to his criticisms.
He described the labour and difficulty of the correction of the text of St. Jerome—a work of which Dorpius had expressed his approval. But he said, with reference to what Dorpius had written upon the New Testament, he could not help wondering what had happened to him—what could have thrown all this dust into his eyes!
There are errors in the Vulgate.
‘You are unwilling that I should alter anything, except when the Greek text expresses the sense of the Vulgate more clearly, and you deny that in the Vulgate edition there are any mistakes. And you think it wrong that what has been approved by the sanction of so many ages and so many synods should be unsettled by any means. I beseech you to consider, most learned Dorpius, whether what you have written be true! How is it that Jerome, Augustine, and Ambrose all cite a text which differs from the Vulgate? How is it that Jerome finds fault with and corrects many readings which we find in the Vulgate? What can you make of all this concurrent evidence—when the Greek versions differ from the Vulgate, when Jerome cites the text according to the Greek version, when the oldest Latin versions do the same, when this reading suits the sense much better than that of the Vulgate,—will you, treating all this with contempt, follow a version perhaps corrupted by some copyist?... In doing so you follow in the steps of those vulgar divines who are accustomed to attribute ecclesiastical authority to whatever in any way creeps into general use.... I had rather be a common mechanic than the best of their number.’
With regard to some other points, it was, he said, more prudent to be silent; but he told Dorpius that he had submitted the rough draft of his Annotations to divines and bishops of the greatest integrity and learning, and these had confessed that they threw much light on Scripture study. He concluded with the expression of a hope that even Dorpius himself, although now protesting against the attempt, would welcome the publication of the book when it came into his hands.
Erasmus at Basle.