‘... Once the monastic life was a retreat or retirement from the world, of men who were called out of idolatry to Christ: now those who are called monks are found in the very vortex of worldly business, exercising a sort of tyrannical rule over the affairs of men. They alone are holy, other men are scarcely Christians. Why should we thus narrow the Christian profession, when Christ wished it to be as broad as possible?[701] Except the big name, what is a state but one great monastery? Let no one despise another because his manner of life is different.... In every path of life let all strive to attain to the mind of Christ [scopum Christi]. Let us assist one another, neither envying those who surpass us, nor despising those who may lag behind. And if anyone should excel another, let him beware lest he be like the Pharisee in the Gospel, who recounted his good deeds to God; rather let him follow the teaching of Christ, and say, “I am an unprofitable servant.” No one more truly has faith than he who distrusts himself. No one is really farther from true religion than he who thinks himself most religious. Nothing is worse for Christian piety than for what is really of the world to be misconstrued to be of Christ—for human authority to be preferred to Divine.’[702]
It was a letter firm and calm in its tone, and well adapted to the end in view. It was dated from Basle, in August, 1518.
The ‘Enchiridion,’ with this prefatory letter, was published in September, together with some minor works, amongst which was the ‘Discussion on the Agony in the Garden,’ including Colet’s reply, in which he had expressed his views on the theory of the ‘manifold senses’ of Scripture, the whole forming an elegant quarto volume printed in the very best type of Froben. Another beautiful edition was published at Cologne in the following year.
II. THE SECOND EDITION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT (1518-19).
The time had come for Erasmus more fully and publicly to reply to the various attacks which had been made upon the ‘Novum Instrumentum.’
Its most bitter opponents had been the ignorant Scotists and monks who were caricatured in the ‘Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum.’ ‘There are none,’ wrote Erasmus to a friend, ‘who bark at me more furiously than they who have never seen even the outside of my book. Try the experiment upon any of them, and you will find what I tell you is true. When you meet any one of these brawlers, let him rave on at my New Testament till he has made himself hoarse and out of breath, then ask him gently whether he has read it. If he have the impudence to say “yes,” urge him to produce one passage that deserves to be blamed. You will find that he cannot.’[703]
To opponents such as these, Erasmus had sufficiently replied by the re-issue of the ‘Enchiridion’ with the new prefatory letter to Volzius.
But there was another class of objectors to the ‘Novum Instrumentum’ who were not ignorant and altogether bigoted, and who honestly differed from the views of Erasmus; some of them, like Luther, because he did not follow the Augustinian theology; others, like Eck, who adhered to Augustine’s theory of verbal inspiration; others, again, who were jealous of the tendencies of the ‘new learning,’ and saw covert heresies in all departures from the beaten track.
Second edition of the New Testament.
The reply of Erasmus to these was a second edition of his New Testament; and this was already in course of publication at Froben’s press.[704]