the parent of Biblical criticism are connected with his secular studies by a closer tie than might appear at first sight. His principal concern was always with literature as such; he was, moreover, a practical moralist, anxious to aid in correcting the evils of his time: but he was not distinctively a theologian; and towards dogmatic theology, in particular, he had little inclination. Now, in pursuing his paramount aim—to make the world better by the humanising influences of literature—the enemy with which he had to do battle was the scholastic philosophy. Hear his words when he is asking how Christians are to convert Turks:—"Shall we put into their hands an Occam, a Durandus, a Scotus, a Gabriel, or an Alvarus? What will they think of us, when they hear of our perplexed subtleties about Instants, Formalities, Quiddities, and Relations?" This was the dreary wilderness of pedantry that had hitherto passed for knowledge. And the scholastic philosophy was securely entrenched behind the scholastic theology. The weapons of that theology were Biblical texts, isolated from their context, and artificially interpreted: the one way to disarm it was to make men know what the Bible really said and meant. Therefore Erasmus felt that his first duty, both as a moralist and as a man of letters, was to promote a knowledge of the Bible. He was not a Hebrew scholar, and could do nothing at first hand with the Old Testament; that province was left to Reuchlin. But in 1516 he published the Greek Testament,—the first edition which had appeared;
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