Of all tendencies in human society none was so greatly and so justly dreaded by church authority as the tendency to criticism. And by criticism we do not mean a carping opposition. We mean only what the word properly denotes: inquiry into the exact facts about any given subject. In proportion as the great structure of ecclesiastical authority had grown more complicated, this nervous dread of free inquiry had increased. Nor was the central authority alone responsible for this state of mind. Every part of the church organisation had done its share to fix this notion of an unchanging uniformity upon the Christian world. The whole philosophy of the Middle Ages, which prided itself, above all else, upon being a Christian philosophy, had exhausted itself in giving a pseudo-scientific form to the most unscientific view of truth the world had ever seen. The great service of Erasmus was, therefore, that he proposed to find out as nearly as he could what the writers of the New Testament had actually said. Of course his apparatus for this inquiry was still, from the point of view of modern science, very defective. He had no earlier scientific commentators to consult, with the single exception of Laurentius Valla, the Italian humanist, who a few years before had published annotations to the Greek text. His criteria of judgment had to be evolved from his own sense of accuracy as he went along. All that vast assistance to intelligent editing which in recent times has come from the cultivation of the historic sense was wanting to him. Nothing was farther from Erasmus' mind than any radical discussion of Christian doctrines. He continually declares his fixed determination to abide by the faith of the Church, and whatever adverse criticism he had to make was against evil practices which always seemed to him only perversions of the essential Christianity of apostolic times. So we are not to look to his New Testament for startling innovations. What gave offence to his enemies was the same quality which gave value to the book,--namely, the single effort to put things as they were. What the "men of darkness" who had come largely to control the practical working of religious affairs least of all desired was precise truth to facts. They were getting on comfortably with a version of truth which suited them very well, and were not inclined to see their precious ease invaded by any restless seeking for ultimate accuracy. They felt, and quite truly, that any jarring of the foundations might bring the whole structure of ceremonies and usages in which they were thriving, about their ears. Erasmus might protest as he would, but the instinct of self-preservation on the part of those who were enjoying the high places of the Church was rightly alarmed. [Illustration: DEVICE OF THE HOUSE OF FROBEN.]