‘Let him approach the New Testament, not with an unholy curiosity, but with reverence; bearing in mind that his first and only aim and object should be that he may catch and be changed into the spirit of what he there learns. It is the food of the soul; and to be of use, must not rest only in the memory or lodge in the stomach, but must permeate the very depths of the heart and mind.’
Then, as to what special acquirements are most useful in the prosecution of these studies:—
‘A fair knowledge of the three languages, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, of course, are the first things. Nor let the student turn away in despair at the difficulty of this. If you have a teacher and the will to learn, these three languages can be learned almost with less labour than every day is spent over the miserable babble of one mongrel language under ignorant teachers. It would be well, too, were the student tolerably versed in other branches of learning—dialectics, rhetoric, arithmetic, music, astrology, and especially in knowledge of the natural objects—animals, trees, precious stones—of the countries mentioned in the Scriptures; for if we are familiar with the country, we can in thought follow the history and picture it to our minds, so that we seem not only to read it, but to see it; and if we do this, we shall not easily forget it. Besides, if we know from study of history not only the position of those nations to whom these things happened, or to whom the Apostles wrote, but also their origin, manners, institutions, religion, and character, it is wonderful how much light and, if I may so speak, life is thrown into the reading of what before seemed dry and lifeless. Other branches of learning—classical, rhetorical, or philosophical—may all be turned to account; and especially should the student learn to quote Scripture, not second-hand, but from the fountain-head, and take care not to distort its meaning as some do, interpreting the “Church” as the clergy, the laity as the “world,” and the like. To get at the real meaning, it is not enough to take four or five isolated words; you must look where they came from, what was said, by whom it was said, to whom it was said, at what time, on what occasion, in what words, what preceded, what followed. And if you refer to commentaries, choose out the best, such as Origen (who is far above all others), Basil, &c., Jerome, Ambrose, &c.; and even these read with discrimination and judgment, for they were men ignorant of some things, and mistaken in others.
‘As to the Schoolmen, I had rather be a pious divine with Jerome than invincible with Scotus. Was ever a heretic converted by their subtleties? Let those who like follow the disputations of the schools; but let him who desires to be instructed rather in piety than in the art of disputation, first and above all apply himself to the fountain-head—to those writings which flowed immediately from the fountain-head. The divine is “invincible” enough who never yields to vice or gives way to evil passions, even though he may be beaten in argument. That doctor is abundantly “great” who purely preaches Christ.’
The ‘Annotations.’
Theory of verbal inspiration rejected.
I have quoted these passages very much at length, that there may be no doubt whatever how fully Erasmus had in these prefaces adopted and made himself the spokesman of Colet’s views. An examination of the ‘Novum Instrumentum’ itself, and of the ‘Annotations’ which formed the second part of the volume, reveals an equally close resemblance between the critical method of exposition used by Colet and that here adopted by Erasmus. There was the same rejection of the theory of verbal inspiration which was noticed in Colet as the result of an honest attempt to look at the facts of the case exactly as they were, instead of attempting to explain them away by reference to preconceived theories.
Thus the discrepancy between St. Stephen’s speech and the narrative in Genesis, with regard to a portion of the history of the Patriarch Abraham, was freely pointed out, without any attempt at reconcilement.[531] St. Jerome’s suggestion was quoted, that Mark, in the second chapter of his Gospel, had, by a lapse of memory, written ‘Abiathar’ in mistake for ‘Ahimelech,’[532] and that Matthew, in the twenty-seventh chapter, instead of quoting from Jeremiah, as stated in the text, was really quoting from the Prophet Zachariah.[533]
The fact that in a great number of cases the quotations from the Old Testament are by no means exact, either as compared with the Hebrew or Septuagint text, was freely alluded to, and the suggestion as freely thrown out that the Apostles habitually quoted from memory, without giving the exact words of the original.[534]
All these were little indications that Erasmus had closely followed in the steps of Colet in rejecting the theory of the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures; and they bear abundant evidence to prove that he did so, as Colet had done, not because he wished to undermine men’s reverence for the Bible, but that they might learn to love and to value its pages infinitely more than they had done before—not because he wished to explain away its facts, but that men might discover how truly real and actual and heart-stirring were its histories—not to undermine the authority of its moral teaching, but to add just so much to it as the authority of the Apostle who had written, or of the Saviour who had spoken, its Divine truths, exceeds the authority of the Fathers who had established the canon, or of the Schoolmen who had buried the Bible altogether under the rubbish of the thousand and one propositions which they professed to have extracted from it.
Let it never be forgotten that the Church party which had staked their faith upon the plenary inspiration of the Bible was the Church party who had succeeded in putting it into the background. They were the party whom Tyndale accused of ‘knowing no more Scripture than they found in their Duns.’ They were the party who throughout the sixteenth century resisted every attempt to give the Bible to the people and to make it the people’s book. And they were perfectly logical in doing so. Their whole system was based upon the absolute inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, and even to a great extent of the Vulgate version. If the Vulgate version was not verbally inspired, it was impossible to apply to it the theory of ‘manifold senses.’ And if a text could not be interpreted according to that theory, if it could not properly be strained into meanings which it was never intended by the writer to convey, the scholastic theology became a castle of cards. Its defenders adopted, and in perfect good faith applied to the Vulgate, the words quoted from Augustine: ‘If any error should be admitted to have crept into the Holy Scriptures, what authority would be left to them?’ If Colet and Erasmus should undermine men’s faith in the absolute inspiration of the Scriptures, it would result, in their view, as a logical necessity, in the destruction of the Christian religion. For the Christian religion, in their view, consisted in blind devotion to the Church, and in gulping whole the dogmatic creed which had been settled by her ‘invincible’ and ‘irrefragable’ doctors.