"An objection will be made here by some 'religious' fellows, who look upon piety as a profession, or, in other words, by certain sweet phrases of blessing seduce the souls of the innocent, serving their own bellies and not Jesus Christ: 'What,' they will say, 'do you forbid the worship of the saints, in whom God is honoured?' Indeed I do not so much condemn those who do this from a certain simple superstition as those who, seeking their own profit, put forth things that might perhaps be tolerated with pure and lofty piety, but encourage for their own advantage the ignorance of the common people. This ignorance I do not in the least despise, but I cannot bear to have them taking indifferent things for the most important, the least for the greatest. I will even approve their asking Rochus for a life of health if they will consecrate their life to Christ; but I should like it still better if they would simply pray that their love of virtue may be increased through their hatred of vice. Let them lay their living and dying in God's hands, and say with Paul 'whether we live or whether we die, we live or die to the Lord.' ... I will bear with weakness, but, like Paul, I will show you a more excellent way." It will be noticed that even thus early in Erasmus' moral appeal, he does not aim at destroying anything. Even for the worship of saints he has plenty of room in his thought, but he says:[58] [58] v., 31-D. "the way to worship the saints is to imitate their virtues. The saint cares more for this kind of reverence than if you burn a hundred candles for him. You think it a great thing to be borne to your grave in the cowl of Francis; but the likeness of his garment will profit you nothing after you are dead, if your morals were unlike his when you were alive.... You pay the greatest reverence to the ashes of Paul, and no harm if your own religion is consistent with this. But if you adore these dead and silent ashes and neglect that image of him which lives and speaks and, as it were, breathes to this day in his writings, is not your religion preposterous? You worship the bones of Paul laid away in a shrine, but you do not worship the mind of Paul enshrined in his writings. You make great things of a scrap of his body seen through a glass case, but you do not marvel at the whole soul of Paul that gleams through his works.... Let infidels, for whom they were given, wonder at these signs, but do you, a believer, embrace the books of that man, so that, while you doubt not that God is able to do all things, you may learn to love Him above all things. You honour an image of the face of Christ, badly cut in stone or painted in colours, but far more honour ought to be given to that image of his soul which by the work of the Holy Spirit is made manifest in the Gospels.... You gaze with awe upon a tunic or a handkerchief