‘In the meantime we are allured by a never-satiated appetite for strife. One dispute gives rise to another, and with wonderful gravity we fight about straws. Then, lest we should seem to have added nothing to the discoveries of the old divines, we audaciously lay down certain positive rules according to which God has performed his mysteries, when sometimes it might be better for us to believe that a thing was done, leaving the question of how it was done to the omnipotence of God. So, too, for the sake of showing our ingenuity, we sometimes discuss questions which pious ears can hardly bear to hear; as, for instance, when it is asked whether the Almighty could have taken upon Him the nature of the devil or of an ass.
‘Besides all this, in our times those men in general apply themselves to theology, the chief of all studies, who by reason of their obtuseness and lack of sense are hardly fit for any study at all. I say this not of learned and upright professors of theology, whom I highly respect and venerate, but of that sordid and haughty pack of divines who count all learning as worthless except their own.
He honours Colet and his work.
‘Wherefore, my dear Colet, in having joined battle with this redoubtable race of men for the restoration, in its pristine brightness and dignity, of that old and true theology which they have obscured by their subtleties, you have in very truth engaged in a work in many ways of the highest honour—a work of devotion to the cause of theology, and of the greatest advantage to all students, and especially the students of this flourishing University of Oxford. Still, to speak the truth, it is a work of great difficulty, and one sure to excite ill-will. Your learning and energy will, however, conquer every difficulty, and your magnanimity will easily overlook ill-will. There are not a few, even among divines themselves, both able and willing to second your honest endeavours. There is no one, indeed, who would not give you a hand, since there is not even a doctor in this celebrated University who has not given attentive audience to your public readings on the Epistles of St. Paul, now of three years’ standing. And which is the most praiseworthy in this, their modesty in not being ashamed to learn from a young man without doctor’s degree, or your remarkable learning, eloquence, and integrity of life, which they have thought worthy of such honour?
Erasmus agrees with Colet but is not ready yet to join him in fellow-work.
‘I do not wonder that you should put your shoulder under so great, a burden, for you are able to bear it, but I do wonder greatly that you should call me, who am nothing of a man, into the fellowship of so glorious a work. For you exhort,—yes, you almost reproachfully urge me, that, by expounding either the ancient Moses[219] or the eloquent Isaiah, in the same way as you have expounded St. Paul, I should try, as you say, to kindle up the studies of this University, now chilled by these winter months. But I, who have learned to live in solitude, know well how imperfectly I am furnished for such a task; nor do I lay claim to sufficient learning to justify my undertaking it. Nor do I judge that I have strength of mind enough to enable me to sustain the ill-will of so many men stoutly maintaining their own ground. Matters of this kind require not a tyro, but a practised general. Nor can you rightly call me immodest in refusing to do what I should be far more immodest to attempt. You act, my dear Colet, in this matter as wisely as they who (as Plautus says) “demand water from a rock.” With what face can I teach what I myself have not learned? How shall I kindle the chilled warmth of others while I am altogether trembling and shivering myself?...
‘But you say you expected this of me, and now you complain that you were mistaken. You should rather blame yourself than me for this. For I have not deceived you. I have neither promised nor held out any prospect of any such thing. But you have deceived yourself in not believing me when I told you truly what I meant to do.
Erasmus is returning to Paris.
‘Nor indeed did I come here to teach poetry and rhetoric, for these ceased to be pleasant to me when they ceased to be necessary. I refuse the one task because it does not come up to my purpose, the other because it is beyond my strength. You unjustly blame me in the one case, my dear Colet, because I never intended to follow the profession of what are called secular studies. As to the other, you exhort me in vain, as I know myself to be too unfit for it. But even though I were most fit, still it must not be. For soon I must return to Paris.
‘In the meantime, whilst I am detained here, partly by the winter, and partly because departure from England is forbidden, owing to the flight of some duke,[220] I have betaken myself to this famous University that I might rather spend two or three months with men of your class than with those be-chained courtiers.