of this grew Erasmus's greatest contribution to the thought of Christendom,- a contribution which is doing its work in all lands to-day: none of Erasmus's revolutionary work has ever shown such persistent vitality as this evolutionary work.1

He soon saw that a monastic life was not for him. Others saw it; among these the Archbishop of Cambray, who made him his private secretary, and finally supplied him the means with which to study at Paris. But these means were dealt out grudgingly. He still had to endure great privations in order to gain instruction from the accomplished teachers gathered there, and in one of his letters he writes:

"I have given my whole soul to Greek learning, and as soon as I get any money I shall first buy Greek books and then clothes."

During his stay in Paris his ability was noted by various men of influence; and now began his struggle to rid himself of monastic and clerical entanglements, in which effort he was finally successful. It was at this period in 1500-that he published among other things the first edition of his Book of Adages' or Proverbs.

The Book of Adages' was the first broadside sent from the new scholarship into the old, and it penetrated European thought widely and deeply. Erasmus became at once the head of the party supporting the new learning against mediæval scholasticism. Admirers sought his friendship on all sides; among them the leading mitred heads, crowned heads, and even the Pope himself. He received letters breathing the warmest friendship from Henry VIII. of England; Francis I. of France; Charles V. of Spain and Germany; the two successive popes, Leo X. and the schoolmate of Erasmus at Deventer, Adrian VI.; and still later from the two popes who succeeded these. In the 'Adages' Erasmus proclaimed war against the mendicant friars throughout Europe; and from time to time, in new editions, came new forms of ridicule, even more and more effective.

Another manifestation of Erasmus's boldness is yet more striking; for while he attacked bigotry fearlessly, he attacked tyranny with yet more bitter hatred. Strenuous as his attacks on bigotry were, he never really penetrated to its underlying principle-to the doctrine that salvation depends upon belief; but in attacking the oppressions of monarchy he went to its very heart. This will be especially shown in the extracts from the 'Adages,' as well as from the other writings given as an appendix to this article. He attacked its foundations; so that one might imagine himself within sound, not of a

1 For the evolution of Erasmus's ideas in Biblical criticism out of those of Valla, see White's History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, Vol. ii., pages 303 and following; also Drummond, Life of Erasmus,' Vol. i., pages 26 and following; also Durand de Laur, Érasme,' Vol. i., pages 16 and fol lowing.

scholar admired in colleges and petted in courts, but of some modern French tribune or American stump orator.

Curiously enough, this book, the 'Adages,' which aided powerfully to bring in the great revolution of the sixteenth century, became the fashion and fad among those at whom it really struck. Pope Leo X., as well as Charles V., Henry VIII., Francis I., and a host of royal personages, welcomed the 'Adages' of Erasmus; just as two centuries later Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great, Joseph II. of Austria, Charles III. of Spain, and a multitude of eighteenthcentury princes, welcomed the 'Persian Letters' of Montesquieu and the Philosophical Dictionary' of Voltaire: the book took hold upon thinking men throughout Europe, and it went speedily through more than fifty editions.

The bitterness of the monks against him and the admiration of thinking men for him steadily increased. From almost every crowned head in Europe, including the Pope, came lucrative invitations to their respective courts. And here a remark should be made in justice to him. It strikes a modern scholar unpleasantly, in reading Erasmus's correspondence, to see him insisting constantly on his needs, and demanding pecuniary aid. He seemed to feel that he had a right to it, and he obtained it: gold, silver, and pensions came to him from every land; from friends in England like Lord Mountjoy, and Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury; and from various personages on the Continent. But this was simply the way of his time among scholars. All this was in the old system of patronage. Men wealthy and high placed were expected to see that the republic of letters received no detriment, and that its main upholders were cared for.

But for any proper understanding of this history, and of Erasmus's character, one thing should be most carefully noted. It is vastly to his credit. The highest Church preferment was pressed upon him by the Pope, by the sovereigns, and by various eminent ecclesiastics, throughout the greater part of his life; cardinals' hats, bishoprics, deaneries, would have been his had he signified a wish, or even a willingness to take them: but positions of this sort, lucrative though they might be, sinecures though they might be, he steadfastly refused. He determined to keep his freedom; to give no one a right to call him servant; to undertake no duties—no matter how splendid or honorable, no matter how easy-which should in any way deprive him of his liberty.

And here sundry sources of Erasmus's qualities should be noted. He was not only a scholar by the study of books, but by the study of men and events. For leading features in his training were his acquaintance with the men best worth knowing, and his knowledge

of the history then making in all parts of Europe. Considering his limited resources and the difficulty of traveling at that period, the frequency and length of his journeys strike us with wonder. We hear of him in Paris, at Oxford and Cambridge, in various parts of Italy, in Germany, in Switzerland, and in the Netherlands. The extent of his correspondence amazes us.

One thing, effective in determining his character, has perhaps not been sufficiently dwelt upon by those who have studied him; this was his intimate association with leading Englishmen. During his different residences in England he was thrown into close relations with some of the best men that the Anglo-Saxon race has ever produced. It was not only the time of the revival of scholarship in England, but of great seriousness in thought. Wyclif had been dead more than a hundred years, but his spirit still lived; among Erasmus's English associates were such scholars as Linacre, Grocyn, Latimer, and above all, Sir Thomas More and Colet. These English friends of his certainly promoted his zeal in scholarship and deepened his character.1

In 1503 appeared a work which showed strongly the influence of Anglo-Saxon devotion to truth, and to the exercise of reason in reaching truth. This was his 'Enchiridion, or Christian's Manual.' It was in the main a quiet, strong argument against the substitution of fetichism for religious thought and action. Though pithy at times, it had much less of the biting, satirical spirit than had his better known writings. In this he argued against all substitutes for real Christian life, of which Europe was then full, and indeed of which all ages and countries have been full. He fell back mainly upon the exercise of right reason as the God-given means of attaining to truth and righteousness. For this he was of course bitterly attacked. One charge against him was that he had denied the existence of real and literal fire in hell. He defended himself rather wittily by saying that he did not deny it, that he only declared it to be more clearly taught in theology than in the Scriptures.

Many things might be noted in this book, but two should be remembered. First, that Erasmus throughout appeals to right reason; not unnatural, then, was the declaration of Ignatius Loyola that these writings cooled his piety. The other point to be noted is, that while there is a similarity in the work of Erasmus upon the great revolution of the sixteenth century to the work of Voltaire upon the revolution of the eighteenth, here is a fundamental difference; here

1 For very full and interesting details of the relations of Erasmus to Englishmen, see Knight, 'Life of Dean Colet,' Oxford, 1823, pages 152 et passim; see also Froude, Life and Letters of Erasmus, pages 105-7; also Seebohm, 'The Oxford Reformers,' London, 1869, passim.

is a depth of moral and religious feeling, and an appeal to the underlying constitution of Christendom, such as appears in none of the French philosophers or Encyclopædists.

In 1511 Erasmus gave to the world a book of a very different sort, his 'Encomium Moriæ,' or Praise of Folly. It was dedicated to Sir Thomas More; and More's name, in a punning way, was imbedded in its title. The work was received with delight from one end of Europe to the other. Later it was illustrated with caricatures by Hans Holbein, and so gained yet wider popularity. In this book Folly is represented as preaching from her lofty pulpit to all sorts and conditions of men; proving that all are fools, and therefore her subjects; and that from her come the gifts they most prize. Especially does she claim credit for the superstitions of the Church; and above all for the monks and theologians, whom she exhibits as her masterpieces.

The publication of the Praise of Folly' raised a terrific storm. The monks were especially violent, but they succeeded poorly. They were too angry. Strange as it may seem, even this work did not lead to any decided break between Erasmus and the higher ecclesiastics outside the monasteries. Pope Leo X., with his dislike for over-fervid religionists, and his passion for amusing literature, still held strongly to the bold thinker who expressed the leading thought of his time so pungently. So did those who succeeded Leo during Erasmus's lifetime; though his immediate successor, Adrian VI., was an ascetic, and cared far more for theology than for literature. This book wrought more powerfully on Erasmus's own time and on that which immediately followed, than any other he ever wrote. Here, to use the old phrase, was "the egg which Erasmus laid and which Luther hatched."

But far more powerful in its remoter consequences on the building up of modern Germany, and indeed on all thinking Christendom, was a book which he published five years later at Basle,- his first edition of the Greek Testament. His main object was doubtless to popularize Biblical studies and to bring them to bear upon the needs of his time. But he also wished to show what the Bible really was, and thus to beat back the dogmatists who used its texts to injure the new learning.

This work was undoubtedly in some sort an evolution out of the earlier work of Laurentius Valla, the only great Italian scholar of the Renascence who had devoted himself to the problems of theology and Biblical criticism. But the spirit of Erasmus was very different

1 For the origin and character of Holbein's illustrations of the Praise of Folly,' with specimens, see Woltmann, Holbein and his Time,' Chap. xi.

from that of Valla. Valla was a brilliant skeptic; Erasmus a profound believer in God and in righteousness. He stands among the first of those who have endeavored to bring the Scriptures within the reach of the world at large; without him the translations of Tyndale in England and of Luther in Germany would have been almost impossible.

But Erasmus's work did not end with his Greek Testament: he wrote a new Latin version, enriching it with notes; and finally a series of paraphrases in Latin of all the New Testament books, except Revelation. These were translated into various modern languages, and of the English version every parish church in England was supplied with a copy.

The greatness of this work is shown in its remoter consequences. This it was which began the application of critical knowledge to our sacred books: Erasmus is the forerunner of that long line of devoted men in all countries who from that day to this have risked reputation and even life, in endeavoring to clear from the sacred text the errors which so many pious men have in all ages insisted on retaining in it.

It is true that he had little of Hebrew scholarship, and that his critical apparatus and knowledge were small compared to that which scholars now consider indispensable; it is true that some of his annotations were fanciful; but as a whole, their acuteness and boldness are among the wonders of European history. He it was who dared strike out the famous verse in the fifth chapter of the first Epistle General of St. John regarding the "three witnesses." For this he was fiercely attacked: in England by Lee, afterwards Archbishop of York; in Spain by Stunica, one of the most renowned of South-European scholars; in France by Budé, syndic of the Sorbonne; by the University of Paris; and throughout Europe by the friars: - but he kept on, and to-day there is no scholar who does not acknowledge that he was right. He it was who dared point out some of the mistakes in quotations made from the Hebrew Scriptures in the Gospels; and to show that the Epistle to the Hebrews is not the work of St. Paul; and that the Revelations of St. John, and the Gospel according to St. John, cannot be the work of the same person; and that the passage in Matthew which is now inscribed around the inner base of St. Peter's dome -"Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church-has no reference to the Papacy. For these things, which the great mass of scholars now accept as mere commonplaces,

For a more thorough statement regarding the work of Valla as compared with that of Erasmus, see White's History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, Vol. ii., pages 303 and following. For the extent of Erasmus's New Testament work, see Jebb's (Erasmus, pages 44, 45.