With regard to the first point, he referred to the well-known, and, as he thought, ‘most excellent argument of St. Augustine’ against the admission of any error in the Scriptures, lest the authority of the whole should be lost. And with regard to the second, he charged Erasmus with making himself a preceptor to the Holy Spirit, as though the Holy Spirit had been wanting in attention or learning, and required the defects resulting from his negligence to be now, after so many centuries, supplied by Erasmus.
He made these criticisms, he wrote, not in the spirit of opposition, but because he could not agree with the preference shown by Erasmus to Jerome over Augustine. It was the one point in which the Erasmian creed was at fault. Nearly all the learned world was Erasmian already, but this one thing all Erasmians complained of in Erasmus—that he would not study the works of St. Augustine. If he would but do this, Eck was sure he would acknowledge that it would be rash indeed to assign to St. Augustine any other than the highest place amongst the fathers of the Church.[691]
Reply of Erasmus.
Erasmus replied[692] to the first objection, that, in his judgment, the authority of the whole Scriptures would not fall with any slip of memory on the part of an Evangelist—e.g. if he put ‘Isaiah’ by mistake for ‘Jeremiah’—because no point of importance turns upon it. We do not forthwith think evil of the whole life of Peter because Augustine and Ambrose affirm that even after he had received the Holy Ghost he fell into error on some points; and so our faith is not altogether shaken in a whole book because it has some defects.
With regard to the colloquial Greek of the Apostles, he took the authority of Jerome, and Origen, and the Greek fathers as good evidence on that point.
With respect to his preference for Jerome over Augustine, he knew what he was about. His preference for Jerome was deliberate, and rested on good grounds. When he came to the passage in Eck’s letter, where he stated that all Erasmians complained of his one fault—not reading Augustine—he could not read it without laughing. ‘I know of nothing in me,’ he wrote, ‘why anyone should wish to be Erasmian, and I altogether hate that term of division. We are all Christians, and labour, each in his own sphere, to advance the glory of Christ.’ But that he had not read the works of Augustine! Why, they were the very first that he did read of the writings of the fathers. He had read them over and over again. Let his critics examine his works, they would find that there was scarcely a work of St. Augustine which was not there quoted many hundred times. Let him compare Augustine and Jerome on their merits. Jerome was a pupil of Origen, and one page of Origen teaches more Christian philosophy than ten of Augustine. Augustine scarcely knew Greek; at all events was not at home in Greek writers. Besides this, by his own confession, he was busied with his bishopric, and could hardly snatch time to learn what he taught to others. Jerome devoted thirty-five years to the study of the Scriptures.
In the meantime, in conclusion, he observed that the difference of opinion between himself and Eck upon these points need not interrupt their friendship, any more than the difference of opinion upon the same point between Jerome and Augustine interrupted theirs.
Having despatched this reply to Eck, and recovered from what proved a short but sharp attack of illness, Erasmus wrote to More on the 1st of June to advise him of his safe arrival at Basle, of his illness and recovery, and to express the hope that a few months would see his labours there accomplished. If the Fates were propitious, he hoped to return to Brabant in September.[693]
What were the works which he had come to Basle to publish during these tumultuous times?