SECT. 4. Scripture is falsely accused of obscurity.
Your allusion to the Corycian cave 92 is therefore not to purpose. The case is not as you represent it, with respect to the Scriptures. The most abstruse mysteries, and those of greatest majesty, are no longer in retreat, but stand at the very door of the cave, in open space, drawn out and exposed to view. For Christ has opened our understanding, that we should understand the Scriptures. (Luk 24.45) And the Gospel has been preached to every creature. (Mar 16.15; Col 1.23) Their sound has gone out into all the land. (Psa 19.4) And all things which have been written, have been written for our learning. (Rom 15.4) Also, all Scripture having been written by inspiration of God, is useful for teaching. (2Tim 3.16) You and all your Sophists, therefore, come and produce a single mystery in the Scriptures which still remains shut up. The fact that so many truths are still shut up to many, does not arise from any obscurity in the Scriptures, but from their own blindness or carelessness, which is such that they take no pains to discern the truth, though it is most evident. As Paul says of the Jews, “The veil remains upon their heart.” (2Cor 3.15) And again, “If our Gospel is hidden, it is hidden to those who are lost; whose hearts the God of this world has blinded.” (2Cor 4.3-4) To blame Scripture, in this matter, is a rashness like that of the man who would complain about the sun and the darkness, after having veiled his own eyes, or gone out of the day-light into a dark room to bide himself.
Then let these wretches cease from such a blasphemous perverseness, as to impute the darkness and dullness of their own minds to the Scriptures of God, which are light itself.
So, when you adduce Paul exclaiming “how incomprehensible are his judgments,” you seem to have referred the pronoun HIS to the Scripture. But Paul does not say how incomprehensible are the judgments of Scripture, but of God. Thus Isa 40.13 does not say ‘who has known the mind of Scripture,’ but, “who has known the mind of the Lord?” Paul, though, asserts that the mind of the Lord is known to Christians: but then it is about “those things which have been freely given to us,” as he says in the same place. (1Cor 2.10-16) You see, therefore, how carelessly you have inspected these passages of Scripture which you have cited — about as aptly as you have done nearly all your others in support of Freewill. And thus your instances which you subjoin with a good deal of suspicion and venom, are not to the purpose at all. For instance, ‘the distinction of Persons in the Godhead,’ ‘the combination of the divine and human nature,’ and ‘the unpardonable sin.’ Their ambiguity, you say, has not even yet been clean removed.93 If you allude to questions which the Sophists have stirred up on these subjects, I am ready to ask what that most innocent volume of Scripture has done to you, that you should charge her with the abuse with which wicked men have contaminated her purity? Scripture simply confesses the Trinity of Persons in God, the humanity of Christ, and the unpardonable sin. What is there of obscurity or ambiguity here?
The Scripture has not told us how these things subsist, as you pretend it has; nor have we any need to know. The Sophists discuss their own dreams on these subjects. Accuse and condemn them if you please; but acquit Scripture. If, on the other hand, you speak of the essential truth, and not of factitious questions, I say again, do not accuse Scripture, but the Arians, and those to whom the Gospel is hidden to such a degree that they have no eye to see the clearest testimonies in support of the Trinity of Persons in God, and the humanity of Christ. This is through the working of Satan, who is their God.
To be brief, there is a twofold clearness in Scripture, even as there is also a twofold obscurity: the one is external, contained in the ministry of the word; the other is internal, which consists in that knowledge which is of the heart. 94
If you speak of this internal clearness, no one discerns an iota of Scripture, except one who has the Spirit of God. All men have a darkened heart; so that, even though they repeat and are able to quote every passage of Scripture, they neither understand nor truly know anything that is contained in these passages. Nor do they believe that there is a God, or that they are themselves God’s creatures, or anything else. According to what is written in Psalm 14, “The fool has said in his heart, God is nothing.” (Psa 14.1.) For the Spirit is necessary to the understanding of the whole of Scripture, and of any part of it.
But if you speak of that external clearness, nothing at all has been left obscure or ambiguous; rather, everything that is contained in the Scriptures has been drawn out into the most assured light, and declared to the whole world by the ministry of the word.
SECT. 5. Freewill is a necessary subject
But it is still more intolerable, that you should class this question of Freewill with those which are useless and unnecessary, and recount a number of articles to us in its stead — the reception of which you deem sufficient to constitute a pious Christian. Assuredly, any Jew or Heathen who had no knowledge at all of Christ, would find it easy enough to draw out such a pattern of faith as yours. You do not mention Christ in a single jot of it, as though you thought that Christian piety might subsist without Christ — if only God, whose nature is most merciful, is worshipped with all our might. What shall I say here, Erasmus? That your whole air is Lucian, and your breath a vast surfeit of Epicurus? 95 If you account this question an unnecessary one for Christians, then take yourself off the stage, I pray; for we account it necessary.
If it is irreligious, if it is curious, if it is superfluous, as you say it is, to know whether God foreknows anything contingently; whether our will is active in those things which pertain to everlasting salvation, or merely passive, grace meanwhile being the agent; whether we do by mere necessity (which we must rather call ‘suffer’) whatever we do of good or evil, what will then be religious, I ask? What is important? What is useful to be known? This is perfect trifling, Erasmus! This is too much. Nor is it easy to attribute this conduct of yours to ignorance. An old man like you, who has lived among Christians and long revolved the Scriptures, leaves us no place for excusing or thinking favourably of him.
Yet the Papists pardon these strange things in you, and bear with you, because you are writing against Luther. Men who would tear you with their teeth if Luther were out of the way, and you were to write such things! Plato may be my friend, or Socrates my friend, but I must honour truth before both. For even if you knew only a little about the Scriptures and about Christianity, the enemy of Christians might surely have known what Christians account necessary and useful, and what they do not. But you are a theologian and a master of Christians. When you set about to prescribe a form of Christianity to them, what might at least have been expected of you is to hesitate, after your usual sceptical manner, as to what is necessary and useful to them. Instead, you glide into the directly opposite extreme, in a manner contrary to your usual temper, with a sort of assertion never heard of before, to now sit as judge, pronouncing those things to be unnecessary which, if they are not necessary and are not certainly known, leaves nothing behind: neither a God, nor a Christ, nor a Gospel, nor a faith, nor anything else even of Judaism, much less of Christianity. Immortal God! What a window, shall I say — what a field, rather — Erasmus hereby opens for acting and speaking against himself! What could you possibly write on the subject of Freewill, which would have anything of good or right in it, when you betray such ignorance of Scripture and of piety, in these words of yours? But I will furl my sails, and talk with you here, not in my own words (as perhaps I will do presently), but in yours.
SECT. 6. Erasmus’ Christianity
The form of Christianity chalked out by you, has this article, among others: that we must strive with all our might; that we must apply ourselves to the remedy of repentance, and solicit the mercy of God by all means. Without this mercy, neither the will, nor the endeavour of man, is efficacious. Also, that no man should despair of pardon from God, whose nature it is to be most merciful.
In these words of yours, there is no mention of Christ, no mention of the Spirit. They are colder than ice itself, so that they do not have even your usual grace of eloquence in them. Perhaps the fear of Priests and Kings 96 had hard work to wring them from the pitiful fellow, that he might not appear to be quite an Atheist. Nevertheless, they contain some ASSERTIONS, such as, that we
