‘Gaspar. I believe firmly what I read in the Holy Scriptures, and the creed called the Apostles’, and I don’t trouble my head any further. I leave the rest to be disputed and defined by the clergy, if they please.
‘Erasmus. What Thales taught you that philosophy?
‘Gaspar. I was for some time in domestic service’ [as More was in the house of Cardinal Morton before he was sent to Oxford], ‘with that honestest of men, John Colet. He imbued me with these precepts.’ See Argent. 1522, leaf c, 4.
[200] ‘Illic in collegio Montis Acuti ex putribus ovis et cubiculo infecto concepit morbum, h.e. malam corporis, antea purissimi, affectionem.’—Vita, prefixed to Eras. Op. i. written by himself. See the letter to Conrad Goclenius.
[201] ‘A studio theologiæ abhorrebat, quod sentiret animum non propensum, ut omnia illorum fundamenta subverteret; deinde futurum, ut hæretici nomen inureretur.’—Vita, prefixed to Eras. Op. i.
[202] See for this anecdote, Eras. Op. iii. p. 458, E and F.
[203] ‘Tanquam afflatus spiritu quodam, “Quid tu, inquit, mihi prædicas istum, qui nisi habuisset multum arrogantiæ, non tanta temeritate tantoque supercilio definisset omnia; et nisi habuisset aliquid spiritus mundani, non ita totam Christi doctrinam sua profana philosophia contaminasset.”’—Eras. Op. iii. p. 458, F.
[204] Summa, i. quest. 52, 53.
[205] ‘Omnino decessit aliquid meæ de illo existimationi.’—Eras. Op. iii. pt. 1, 458, F.
[206] See The Praise of Folly, Eras. Op. iv. p. 462, where the dogmatic science of the age is as severely satirised by Erasmus as the dogmatic theology of the Schoolmen. Thus Folly is made to say:—‘With what ease, truly, do they indulge in day-dreams (delirant), when they invent innumerable worlds, and measure the sun, moon, and stars, and the earth, as though by thumb and thread; and render a reason for thunder, winds, eclipses, and other inexplicable things, without the least hesitation, as though they had been the secret architects of all the works of nature, or as though they had come down to us from the council of the gods. At whom and whose conjectures nature is mightily amused!’