Page:The whole familiar colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.djvu/15

 PREFACE. xi simplicity or superstition, persuading them there is no hope of salvation out of a monastery. I should not have given this counsel, if the world were not full of such fishermen, and a great many excellent wits were not unhappily smothered and buried alive by these fellows, which otherwise, if they had judiciously taken upon them a course of life suitable to their inclinations, might have been choice vessels of the Lord. But if at any time I shall be constrained to speak my mind upon this subject, I will both so paint out these kidnappers, and the heinousness of the evil itself, that every one shall own that I have not given this advice without a cause ; although I have done it civilly too, lest I should give occasion of offence to ill men. In the next Colloquy, I do not bring in a virgin that has changed her course of life after she has professed herself, but before she has completely entered upon the profession she returns to her parents, who are very loving to her. In the Colloquy blaming Marriage, how many philosophical sayings are there relating to concealing the faults of husbands ; relating to the hearty good-will of married persons, not to be broken off; relating to the making up breaches, and reforming the manners of husbands ; of the pliable manner of wives towards their husbands 1 What else do Plutarch, Aristotle, and Xenophon teach ? but that here the persons add a kind of life to the discourse. In the Colloquy of the Soldier and Carthusian, I at once do lively describe both the madness of young men who run into the army, and the life of a pious Carthusian, which, without delight in his studies, cannot but be melancholy and unpleasant. In the Colloquy concerning Untruthfulness, I set forth the dis- positions of some persons who are born to lying, than which kind of persons there is nothing more abominable : I wish they were more rare. In the Colloquy of the Young Man and the Harlot, do I not make baudy-houses chaste ? And what could be imagined more effectual, either to implant the care of chastity in the minds of young men, or to reclaim young maids who are set to sale for gain, from a course of life that is as wretched as it is beastly ? There is one word only that has offended some persons, because the immodest girl, soothing the young man, calls him her cocky ; whereas this is a very common expression among us with honest matrons. He that cannot away with this, instead of my cocky, let him read my delight, or anything else that he pleases. In the Poetical Banquet, I shew whai kind of feasts students ought to keep, viz., a frugal, but a jocose and merry one, seasoned with learned stories, without contentions, backbiting, and obscene discourse. In the Inquiry concerning Faith, I s$t forth the sum of the Catholic religion, and that too something more lively and clearly than it is taught by some divines of great fame ; among which I reckon Gerson, whom, in the meantime, I mention by name for honour's sake. And besides, I bring in the person of a Lutheran, that there may be a more easy agreement betwixt them, in that they agree in the chief articles of the orthodox religion, although I have not added the remaiu- iug part of the inquiry, because of the malice of the times.