Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/30

 22 ERASMUS January intentions were not always understood. And like the medieval teachers Erasmus never forgot the voice of authority which spoke to him when his discussions and digressions had ended. Here, I think, we have the explanation why he wrote as he did and yet complained that he was misunderstood alike by reformers who hailed him as their own and by the rigidly orthodox who held him destructive. He might satirize the schoolmen of his own day, but nevertheless he thought boldly but reverently, as had the schoolmen of earlier days. But in his time methods of thought and even thought itself were hardening. So he was misunderstood then by men of opposite schools, just as he is misunderstood now when he is hailed as a herald of modern thought.* Nothing caused Erasmus more pain than to be charged with heresy or even with a leaning towards it. And this was because he was so sure of his own full acceptance of the church's teaching. Thus his controversy with Bedda^ (in 1525) at Paris took up much time which he would fain have spent otherwise, and this was not solely because of the danger it might bring upon him. So, too, the charge of unsound teaching about Christ brought against him by Lefevre, whom he respected even when forced to oppose him, was a great pain to him. And his letters are ample proof of this : ^ he was horrified to think that any one could suppose he had taught wrongly upon the two natures in Christ. And accordingly he took great, perhaps imnecessary, pains to defend himself — not from timidity, for he never hesitated to speak his mind, but because he valued the truth. More and more revolutionary became the times : in 1524 the Peasants' Revolution surged round the cities, and the con- troversies round Erasmus raged as keenly down to 1529. At length (1525) the Colloquies were condemned by the Sorbonne, although Francis I did stay the wearisome Bedda from buzzing round Erasmus. But one strange result of the condemnation was that as soon as it had become widely known one book- seller ordered 24,000 copies and disposed of them. In Spain, in France, and nearer home (which now meant Basle, whither Erasmus had betaken himself in 1521) where the tide of dogmatism, that I could easily declare myself a member of the sceptic school, when- over I am not met by the inviolable authority of Holy Scripture and of the Church, to which I willingly submit my reason in all things, whether I understand what it prescribes or do not understand ' (see Drummond, ii. 361). This is perfectly clear. And the scepticism of Erasmus was, as it seems to me, far more akin to that of medieval scholastics, who were inspired by eagerness not by doubt, than to that of more modern writers. » See Nichols, ui 177, 179, 184, and 187.
 * He says in his treatise on Free-will (Op. ix. 1215 D) : ' I have such a horror of
 * Drummond, vol. ii, ch. xvi, describes the whole controversy at length.