n, as a trifle, composed at the request
of a friend in a couple of days stolen from his studies (though,
strictly speaking, this only holds good of the first draft, which he
elaborated afterwards). The chief object of his studies he had already
conceived to be the restoration of theology. One day he will expound
Paul, 'that the slanderers who consider it the height of piety to know
nothing of _bonae literae_, may understand that we in our youth embraced
the cultured literature of the Ancients, and that we acquired a correct
knowledge of the two languages, Greek and Latin--not without many
vigils--not for the purpose of vainglory or childish satisfaction, but
because, long before, we premeditated adorning the temple of the Lord
(which some have too much desecrated by their ignorance and barbarism)
according to our strength, with help from foreign parts, so that also in
noble minds the love of Holy Scripture may be kindled'. Is it not still
the Humanist who speaks?

We hear, moreover, the note of personal justification. It is sounded
also in a letter to Colet written towards the close of 1504,
accompanying the edition of the _Lucubrationes_ in which the
_Enchiridion_ was first published. 'I did not write the _Enchiridion_ to
parade my invention or eloquence, but only that I might correct the
error of those whose religion is usually composed of more than Judaic
ceremonies and observances of a material sort, and who neglect the
things that conduce to piety.' He adds, and this is typically
humanistic, 'I have tried to give the reader a sort of art of piety, as
others have written the theory of certain sciences'.

The art of piety! Erasmus might have been surprised had he known that
another treatise, written more than sixty years before, by another canon
of the Low Countries would continue to appeal much longer and much more
urgently to the world than his manual: the _Imitatio Christi_ by Thomas
a Kempis.

The _Enchiridion_, collected with some other pieces into a volume of
_Lucubrationes_, did not meet with such a great and speedy success as
had been bestowed upon the _Adagia_. That Erasmus's speculations on true
piety were considered too bold was certainly not the cause. They
contained nothing antagonistic to the teachings of the Church, so that
even at the time of the Counter-Reformation, when the Church had become
highly suspicious of everything that Erasmus had written, the divines
who drew up the _index expurgatorius