IV. MORE’S CONVERSION ATTEMPTED BY THE MONKS (1519).
Erasmus was as much hated by the monks in England as by the monks at Cologne; but they found their attempts to stir up ill-feeling against him checkmated by the influence of More and his friends.
More’s father was known to be a good Catholic, and probably to belong, as an old man with conservative tendencies was likely to do, to the orthodox party. He himself was now too near the royal ear to be a harmless adherent of the new learning—as they had learned to their cost before now. He was so popular, too, with all parties! If only he could be detached from Erasmus and brought over to their own side, what a triumph it would be!
More receives a letter from a monk.
So an anonymous letter was written by a monk to More, expressing great solicitude for his welfare, and fears lest he should be corrupted by too great intimacy with Erasmus; lest he should be led astray, by too great love of his writings, into the adoption of his new and foreign doctrines!
The good monk was particularly shocked at the hints thrown out by Erasmus in his writings, that, after all, the holy doctors and fathers of the Church were fallible.
He took up the vulgar objections which the letter of Dorpius, and a still more recent attack upon Erasmus, by an Englishman named Edward Lee, had put into every one’s mouth, and tried to persuade More to be wise in time, lest he should become infected with the Erasmian poison.
More’s letter in reply to the over-anxious monk has been preserved.[738]
His reply.