Twenty Two Select Colloquies Pleasantly Representing Several Superstitious Levities That Were Crept Into the Church of Rome in His Days Classic Reprint

Excerpt from Twenty Two Select Colloquies: Pleasantly Representing Several Superstitious Levities That Were Crept Into the Church of Rome in His Days

Roger l'estrange (or R. L.s. As he liked to call himself) could have chosen no better author to translate, in justifi cation of himself, than Erasmus, and no better book than the Colloquies. Not that there is any close resemblance between the two men, but that l'estrange, a lifelong lover of exchanging blows, held himself for the moment, what Erasmus never ceased to be, an enemy of fanaticism. Of the heavy weapons, which served l'estrange for the combat, Erasmus knew nothing. The most that can be said of him is that he forged the weapons, which others put to a use, of which he disapproved. He was a student, a man of ease and of the world, not a fighter, and though he would not suppress his opinions, he had no intention to go to the stake for them. He could not in any circumstances have grown into a pamphleteer. He preferred reason to passion; he put the growth of wisdom before violence. He stayed always within the limits of the Church he never wavered in his allegiance to Rome; and while he held himself free to criticize whatever abuses he observed, he had no desire to destroy the system in which he had been brought up. He was one who loved learning for its own sake, a quiet scholar, who left his study, not to engage in battle, but to indulge in the love of travel, which never left him. Above all, he disliked the noisy disputes of the theologians. Luther is no more to me, said he, than any stranger he might meet; and as for the man's books, I have not had time to turn over more than one or two pages. And yet it is pretended - so I am told that he had my help in his work.

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