"I would have all Christians so live that those who alone are now called 'religious' should seem very little religious--and that is true to-day in not a few cases; for why should we hide what is open to all?" His picture of the true monks, as Benedict and Bernard would have had them, must have seemed Utopian indeed. They were merely voluntary communities of friends, living "in the liberty of the spirit according to the Gospel law, and under certain necessary rules about dress and food. They hated riches, they avoided all offices, even those of the church; they laboured with their hands, so that they might not only be no burden upon others, but might have a surplus to relieve distress; they dwelt upon mountain-peaks, in swamps, and sandy deserts." Now let whoever will compare all this with the monks of his own day! Things had moved very rapidly in the fifteen years since Erasmus had written the Enchiridion, but the tone of this defence is quite in harmony with that of the book itself. It is not loose and vulgar abuse of the "religious" orders, but rather a calm and consistent appeal to the one true standard of Christian life, namely to the teaching and example of Christ himself. This is the great interest of this little manual of the Christian gentleman. It shows Erasmus as a clear-eyed critic of existing institutions, rather than as a man who had any definite scheme of reform to propose. Throughout the book there is but one concrete proposition: that a commission be appointed--by whom is not suggested--to reduce the substance of Christian faith and morals to such simple form that it could be understood by everyone. A very pretty and amiable suggestion indeed, but hardly suited to a moment when the irreconcilable nature of the great conflict between a religious system founded upon formalism and the simple morality of the Gospel was beginning to be more and more clearly felt. In the year following the publication of the Enchiridion, while Erasmus was quietly going on with his studies, living where he could find a comfortable place for the moment, he was suddenly called upon to perform one of the very few public functions of his life. Philip, Duke of Burgundy, son of the Emperor Maximilian and administrator of the government in the Low Countries, was returning from a journey to Spain and France in the year 1504 and was to be received at Brussels with all fitting demonstrations of loyalty and affection. Among other things the community desired to show its appreciation of learning by inflicting upon the young man a public oration in as good style as they could pay for.