a brief note on Erasmus...

     Erasmus to my ear is a great Renaissance writer, like Cervantes or Ronsard or Montaigne or even Rabelais. He has wit, daring, and a fine style. He is not as deep as those (and others), but The Praise of Folly, Pope Julius Barred from Heaven, and the Epigram Against Pope Julius are small masterpieces. Had he not chosen to accost Luther, whose chops in logic and exegesis were superior, we would remember Erasmus as a respectable member of that distinguished company. Instead, in his ill-conceived and hastily dispatched Diatribe he exalts Roman Magisterial Authority in a manner I can only call fideist, all for the sake of defending the dubious philosophical and theological construct known as 'free choice'. It's just sad.