Erasmus was firmly convinced that Christianity was above all things something practical. It had to do with the ordinary life of mankind. It meant love, humility, purity, reverence,—every virtue which the Saviour had made manifest in His life on earth. This early “Christian philosophy” had been buried out of sight under a Scholastic Theology full of sophistical subtleties, and had been lost in the mingled Judaism and Paganism of the popular religious life, with its weary ceremonies and barbarous usages. A true reformation, he believed, was the moral renovation of mankind, and the one need of the age was to return to that earlier purer religion based on a real inward reverence for and imitation of Christ. The man of letters, like himself, he conceived could play the part of a reformer, and that manfully, in two ways. He could try, by the use of wit and satire, to make contemptible the follies of the Schoolmen and the vulgar travesty of religion which was in vogue among the people. He could also bring before the eyes of all men that earlier and purer religion which was true Christianity. He could edit the New Testament, and enable men to read the very words which Jesus spoke and Paul preached, make them see the deeds of Jesus and hear the apostolic explanations of their meaning. He could say: “Only be teachable, and you have already made much way in this (the Christian) Philosophy. It supplies a spirit for a teacher, imparted to none more readily than to the simple-minded. Other philosophies, by the very difficulty of their precepts, are removed out of the range of most minds. No age, no sex, no condition of life is excluded from this. The sun itself is not more common and open to all than the teaching of Christ. For I utterly dissent from those who are unwilling that the Sacred Scriptures should be read by the unlearned translated into their vulgar tongue, as though Christ had taught such subtleties that they can scarcely be understood even by a few theologians, or as though the strength of the Christian religion consisted in men’s ignorance of it. The mysteries of kings it may be safer to conceal, but Christ wished His mysteries to be published as openly as possible. I wish that even the weakest woman should read the Gospel—should read the Epistles of Paul. And I wish these were translated into all languages, so that they might be read and understood, not only by Scots and Irishmen, but also by Turks and Saracens. To make them understood is surely the first step. It may be that they might be ridiculed by many, but some would take them to heart. I long that the husbandman should sing portions of them to himself as he follows the plough, that the weaver should hum them to the tune of his shuttle, that the traveller should beguile with their stories the tedium of his journey.”(122)