SECT. 12. Universal prevalence of this persuasion.
But why should these things be kept from us Christians so that it is irreligious, curious, and vain for us to search and to know them, when heathen poets and the very vulgar are wearing them threadbare, by the most common use of them in conversation? How often the single poet Virgil mentions fate! ‘All things subsist by a fixed law.’ ‘Every man has his day fixed.’ Again, ‘If the fates call you.’ Again, ‘If you can by any means burst the bonds of the cruel fates.’ It is this poet’s sole object to show that in the destruction of Troy, and the raising up of the Roman empire from its ruins, fate did more than all human efforts put together. In short, he subjects his immortal Gods to fate, making even Jupiter himself and Juno yield to it necessarily. Hence, they imagined these three fatal sisters, the Parcae, whom they represent as immutable, implacable, inexorable.
Those wise men discovered (what fact and experience prove) that no man has ever yet received the accomplishment of his own counsels; but all have had to meet events which differed from their expectations. ‘If Troy could have been defended by a human right hand, it would have been defended even by this,’ says Virgil’s Hector. Hence, that most hackneyed expression in everybody’s mouth, ‘God’s will be done.’ Again, ‘If it pleases God, we will do so.’ Again, ‘So God would have it.’
‘So it seemed good to those above.’ ‘So you would have it,’ says Virgil. So that, in the minds of the common people, knowledge of the predestination and foreknowledge of God is not less inherent, we perceive, than the very notion that there is a God. Although blessed Augustine condemns fate, with good reason, speaking of the fate maintained by the Stoics. But those who professed to be wise went to such lengths in their disputations that, in the end, their heart being darkened, they became foolish (Rom 1.22). They denied or dissembled those things which the poets, and the vulgar, and their own consciences, account most common, most certain, and most true.
SECT. 13. The exceeding temerity and mischievousness of Erasmus’ pretended and boasted moderation.
I go further and declare not only how true these things are (I will later speak more at large about them from the Scriptures), but also how religious, pious, and necessary it is to know them. For if these things are not known, it is impossible that either faith or any worship of God should be maintained. For this would be a real and notorious ignorance of God, with which salvation cannot consist. For if you either doubt this truth, or despise the knowledge of it — that God foreknows and wills all things, not contingently but necessarily and immutably — then how will you be able to believe his promises, and trust and lean upon them with full assurance? For when He promises, you ought to be sure that he knows what he promises, and is able and willing to accomplish it. Otherwise, you will account Him neither true nor faithful — which is unbelief, the highest impiety and a denial of the most high God.
How will you be confident and secure, if you do not know that He certainly, infallibly, unchangeably, and necessarily knows and wills, and will perform what he promises? Nor should we merely be certain that God necessarily and immutably wills, and will perform what he has promised.
But we should even glory in this very thing, as Paul does in Romans 3: “But let God be true and every man a liar.” (Rom 3.4) And again, “Not that the word of God has been of no effect.’ (Rom 9.6) And in another place, “The foundation of God stands sure, having this seal: the Lord knows those who are his.” (2Tim 2.19) And in Titus 1, “which God, who cannot lie, has promised before the world began.” (Tit 1.2) And in Hebrews 11, “He that comes to God must believe that God exists, and that he is a rewarder of those who hope in him.” (Heb 11.6)
So then, the Christian faith is altogether extinguished, the promises of God and the whole Gospel fall absolutely to the ground, if we are taught and believe that we have no need to know that the foreknowledge of God is necessary, and that all acts and events are necessary. For this is the sole and highest possible consolation of Christians, in all adversities: to know that God does not lie, but brings all things to pass without any possibility of change; and that his will can neither be resisted, nor altered, nor hindered. See now, my Erasmus, where this most abstinent and peace-loving theology of yours leads us! You call us off from endeavouring — no, you forbid that we endeavour — to learn the foreknowledge of God and necessity, in their influence upon men and things. You counsel us to abandon such topics, to avoid and to hold them in abhorrence. By this ill-advised labour of yours, you at the same time teach us to cultivate an ignorance of God (what in fact comes of itself, and even grows on us 115), to despise faith, to forsake God’s promises, and to make nothing of all the consolations of the Spirit and the assurances of our own conscience. These are injunctions which scarcely Epicurus himself would lay upon us!
Not content with this, you go on to call that man irreligious, curious, and vain who takes pains to get knowledge of these things. And you call that man, religious, pious, and sober who despises them. What else do you achieve by these words, then, but that Christians are curious, vain, and irreligious; and that Christianity is a thing of no moment at all — vain, foolish, and absolutely impious. It thus happens that, while you would above all things deter us from rashness — from being hurried into the opposite extreme, as fools usually are — you teach us nothing but the most excessive temerities and impieties, which must lead us to destruction. Are you aware that, in this part, your book is so impious, so blasphemous, and so sacrilegious, as to nowhere have its like?
I do not speak of your intention, as I already said. For I do not think you so abandoned as to wish from your heart, either to teach these things, or to see them practised by others. But I would show you what strange things a man obliges himself to babble, without knowing what he says, when he undertakes a bad cause. I would also show you what it is to strike our foot against divine truth and the divine word, while we personate a character in compliance with the wishes of others, and with many qualms of conscience, to bustle through a scene in which we have no just call to appear. 116
It is not a play or a pastime to teach theology and piety. In such an employment it is most easy to make that sort of fall which James speaks of, 117 when he says, “He that offends in one point becomes guilty of all.” (Jam 2.10) For thus it comes to pass that, while we think we mean to trifle but a little, having lost our due reverence for the Scriptures, we soon get entangled in impieties, and are plunged over head and ears in blasphemies — just what has happened to you in this case, Erasmus! May the Lord pardon and have mercy on you!
As to the fact that the Sophists have raised such swarms of questions on these subjects, and have mixed a multitude of other unprofitable matters with them, such as you mention — I am aware of this, and I acknowledge it as well as you, and have inveighed against it with yet more sharpness and at greater length than you. But you are foolish and rash in mixing, confounding, and assimilating the purity of sacred truth with the profane and foolish questions of ungodly men. They have defiled the gold and changed its beautiful colour, as Jeremiah says (Lam 5.1). But gold is not to be straightway compared to dung and thrown away together with it, as you have done.
The gold must be recovered out of their hands, and the purity of Scripture separated from their dregs and filth. I have always been aiming to do this, in order that one sort of regard might be paid to the divine word, and another to their trifling conceits. Nor should it move us, that no other advantage has been gained by these questions, than that with great expense of concord, we have come to love less, while we are far too eager to get wisdom. Our question is not what advantage the disputatious Sophists have gained; but how we may ourselves become good Christians. Nor should you impute to Christian doctrine, what ungodly men do amiss. For this is not at all to the purpose; you might have spoken of it in another place, and spared your paper.
SECT. 14. All Scripture truth may be published safely.
In your third chapter, you go
