ervances, after all, may contain valuable sentiments of unexpressed
and unformulated piety.

Through his treatises, his letters, his _Colloquies_ especially, there
always passes--as if one was looking at a gallery of Brueghel's
pictures--a procession of ignorant and covetous monks who by their
sanctimony and humbug impose upon the trustful multitude and fare
sumptuously themselves. As a fixed motif (such motifs are numerous with
Erasmus) there always recurs his gibe about the superstition that a
person was saved by dying in the gown of a Franciscan or a Dominican.

Fasting, prescribed prayers, the observance of holy days, should not be
altogether neglected, but they become displeasing to God when we repose
our trust in them and forget charity. The same holds good of confession,
indulgence, all sorts of blessings. Pilgrimages are worthless. The
veneration of the Saints and of their relics is full of superstition and
foolishness. The people think they will be preserved from disasters
during the day if only they have looked at the painted image of Saint
Christopher in the morning. 'We kiss the shoes of the saints and their
dirty handkerchiefs and we leave their books, their most holy and
efficacious relics, neglected.'

Erasmus's dislike of what seemed antiquated and worn out in his days,
went farther still. It comprised the whole intellectual scheme of
medieval theology and philosophy. In the syllogistic system he found
only subtlety and arid ingenuity. All symbolism and allegory were
fundamentally alien to him and indifferent, though he occasionally tried
his hand at an allegory; and he never was mystically inclined.

Now here it is just as much the deficiencies of his own mind as the
qualities of the system which made him unable to appreciate it. While he
struck at the abuse of ceremonies and of Church practices both with
noble indignation and well-aimed mockery, a proud irony to which he was
not fully entitled preponderates in his condemnation of scholastic
theology which he could not quite understand. It was easy always to talk
with a sneer of the conservative divines of his time as _magistri
nostri_.

His noble indignation hurt only those who deserved castigation and
strengthened what was valuable, but his mockery hurt the good as well as
the bad in spite of him, assailed both the institution and persons, and
injured without elevating them. The individualist Erasmus never
understood what it meant to offend the h