"If Paul commands his time, in which the gift of the Spirit was flourishing, to prove the spirits, whether they be of God, what must we do in this fleshly age? How then shall we judge the spirits? by learning? On both sides there are men of learning. By the life? there are sinners on both sides. In the other life is the whole choir of the saints who approve the freedom of the will. 'But,' they say, 'those were mortals'; true, and I am comparing men with men, not men with gods. I am asked: 'What have majorities to do with the meaning of Scripture?' I answer: 'What have minorities to do with it?' I am asked: 'How does the mitre help in understanding Scripture?' I answer: 'How does the cloak help or the cowl?' I am asked: 'What has the understanding of philosophy to do with the understanding of Scripture?' I answer: 'What has ignorance to do with it?' I am asked: 'What can be done for a knowledge of Scripture by a Council, in which it may happen that no one has the Spirit?' I answer: 'What can be done by private gatherings of a few men, among whom it is far more probable that no one has the Spirit?' ... "If you ask them by what proof they know the true sense of Scripture, they reply, 'By the witness of the Spirit.' If you ask how _they_ come to have the Spirit, rather than those whose miracles have been known to all the world, they reply as if there had been no Gospel in the world for thirteen hundred years. If you ask of them a life worthy of the Spirit, they reply that they are justified by faith, not by works. If you ask for miracles they tell you that these have long since ceased and that there is no need of them in the present clear light of Scripture. If you deny that Scripture is clear on this point, upon which so many of the greatest men have been involved in darkness, the circle comes round again to its beginning." Now all this is very clever--too clever, in fact; for it amounts to nothing but an elaborate defence of the principle of human authority in belief. By means of this introduction, Erasmus sets himself squarely against the principle of free interpretation of the original sources of Christianity by the light of reason and knowledge, for which the Reformation was really working and towards which he himself by his own New Testament work had been contributing. Another principle of Erasmus, especially irritating to Luther, was that the truth should not always be spoken, a maxim as obviously true as the application of it was liable to gross abuse.