Page:The whole familiar colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.djvu/289

ICHTHYOPHAGIA ; OR, FISH-EATING. 285 bawl, dance, fight, play at dice at the church-door, so that you can’t hear what the parson says when he is preaching; and this is no offence. Fi. A wonderful perversity of judgment!

Bu. I’ll tell you another story not much unlike this: It is now almost two years since the same Eros went for the sake of his health to ferventia, and I out of civility bore him company. He went to an old friend’s house, who had given him frequent invitations by letters: He was a great man, and one of the pillars of the church. When they came to eating of fish, eros began to be in his old condition; a whole troop of distempers were coming upon him, a fever, severe head-ache, vomiting, and the stone. His landLord, tho’ he saw his friend in this danger, did not dare to give him a bit of flesh-meat; but why? He saw a great many reasons that he might do it; he saw likewise the pope’s licence: But he was afraid of publick censure; and the disease had grown so far upon him, that then it was in vain to give it him. Fi. What did Eros do? I know the man’s temper, he’d sooner die than be injurious to his friend. Bu. He shut himself up in a chamber, and lived three days after his own manner; his dinner was one egg, and his drink water and sugar boiled. As soon as his fever was abated he took horse, carrying provision along with him. Fi. What was it? Bu. Almond-milk in a bottle, and dried grapes in his portmanteau. When he came home, the stone seized him, and he lay by for a whole month. But for all this, after he was gone, there was a very hot, but a false report of eating flesh follow’d him, which reach’d as far as Paris; and a great many notorious lyes told about it. What remedy do you think proper for such offences?

Fi. I would have every body empty their chamber-pots upon their heads, and if they happen to meet them in the street, to stop their noses while they go by them, that they may be brought to a sense of their madness.

Bu. I think truly the divines ought to write sharply against such pharisaical impiety. But what is your opinion of his landlord? Fi. He seems to me a very prudent man, who knows from what frivolous causes the people excite such dismal tragedies. Bu. This may indeed be the effect of prudence, and we may interpret the good man’s timorousness as favourably as may be; but how many are there, who in the like case suffer their brother to die, and pretend a cautiousness to act against the usage of the church, and to the offence of the people; but have no fear upon them of acting to the offence of the people, in living a life publickly scandalous, in rioting, whoring, luxury, and idleness, in the highest contempt of religion, in rapine, simony, and cheating? Fi. There are too many such; that which they call piety, is nothing but a barbarous and impious cruelty. But yet methinks they seem to be more cruel, who do not leave a man in danger occasionally, but invent dangers for him, and force many into them as into a trap, into manifest danger of both body and soul, especially having no authority for it. Bu. I wait to hear what you have to say.

Fi. About thirty years ago I liv’d at Paris, in the college called Vinegar College. Bu. That’s a name of wisdom: But what say you? Did a salt-fishmonger dwell in that sour college? No wonder then, he is so acute a disputant in questions in divinity; for, as I hear,