Battle of the Bibles - Present Truth

Chapter Two
Colet and Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus of Holland was twelve years Reuchlin's junior. He was born
in 1467 of parents who had neglected the formality of wedlock; yet this did not deter
them from naming their son, "Gerard", meaning in Dutch, "The Beloved".
The young Gerard early showed all the classic signs of genius. His fascination
and aptitude for learning languages were soon put to practical use. He sought out the
Greek equivalent of his name and promptly renamed himself "Erasmus". To this he
prefixed the Latin equivalent "Desiderius"; hence a name was coined which would within
his lifetime, attract to itself a lustre rarely duplicated in any one generation. Acclaimed as
"the great genius of the age", he was destined to do for the New Testament what
Reuchlin had done for the Old.
Although unlike his younger contemporary, Martin Luther who was born in 1483,
it would not be to the credit of the Reformers to designate Erasmus as such. Yet his life
and work were indispensable to the development of the Reformation.
As was the custom of his time, Erasmus received a monastic education, but this
experience only served to alert him to the folly of the prevailing scholasticism and the
malpractices of the church. He was to spend much of his early career sharpening his wit
and literary skills in satirising the vices practised by the clerics.
In so doing, he was only confirming the developing antisacerdotal tendency of
the age, a condition which the church blamed upon the revival of learning brought about
by classical scholars whom it was pleased to brand as "humanists". In many cases this
was true, especially as we have noted of the Italian scholars.
But in England and Germany the scholarship of the theologians had been
tempered by the now widespread teachings of Wycliffe and his followers, a circumstance
not readily available to the Italians by virtue of their proximity to Rome. Then there was
an almost constant stream of rottenness issuing forth from the Holy See, the effects of
which conditioned the minds of thinking Italians to embrace a humanistic philosophy.
Perhaps it was the divine hand of Providence that prevented Erasmus's monastic
training from confirming him in such a course through his meeting with John Colet.
John Colet, son of a London Lord Mayor, was naturally of a religious
temperament. Having spent some time as a student at Oxford, he went to Rome to
further his ecclesiastical education. There he was imbued with the spirit of the revival of
learning. But the scandalous stories he there heard about the comparatively recent
behaviour of Pope Alexander VI and Caesar Borgia, impressed him with the urgent need
for ecclesiastical reform.
Returning to Oxford, Colet lectured on the works of the church and its system of
religion, condemning its preoccupation with power, money and pleasure, and
denouncing the loose morals of the clergy. As for the popes, he spoke of them as
"wickedly distilling poison to the destruction of the Church" (Seebohm, "The Era of the
Protestant Revolution", p 77).
In evidence of his sincerity as an honest Catholic committed to reforming his
church, Colet cried:
"Oh Jesu Christ, wash for us not our feet only, but also our hands and our head!
Otherwise our disordered Church cannot be far from death". (ibid p 78)
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