Editing Erasmus (section)

===== "False evangelicals" =====
In 1529, Erasmus wrote "An epistle against those who falsely boast they are Evangelicals" to [[Gerard Geldenhouwer|Gerardus Geldenhouwer]] (former Bishop of Utrecht, also schooled at Deventer).

{{Blockquote| text=You declaim bitterly against the luxury of priests, the ambition of bishops, the tyranny of the Roman Pontiff, and the babbling of the sophists; against our prayers, fasts, and Masses; and you are not content to retrench the abuses that may be in these things, but must needs abolish them entirely.<ref name=preserved>''The Reformers on the Reformation (foreign),'' London, Burns & Oates, 1881, [https://archive.org/stream/a636947900londuoft#page/12/mode/2up/search/vulturius+neocomus pp. 13–14]. See also ''Erasmus'', Preserved Smith, 1923, Harper & Brothers, [https://books.google.com/books?id=l0obJ9XfPMUC&pg=PA391 pp. 391–92].</ref>}}

Here Erasmus complains of the doctrines and morals of the Reformers, applying the same critique he had made about public Scholastic disputations:

{{Blockquote|
Look around on this 'Evangelical' generation,<ref>{{lang|la|Circumspice populum istum Euangelicum...}} Latin text in Erasmus, [https://books.google.com/books?id=WIhDAAAAcAAJ&pg=PT174 ''Opera Omnia''] (1706), vol. 10, 1578BC.</ref> and observe whether amongst them less indulgence is given to luxury, lust, or avarice, than amongst those whom you so detest. Show me any one person who by that Gospel has been reclaimed from drunkenness to sobriety, from fury and passion to meekness, from avarice to liberality, from reviling to well-speaking, from wantonness to modesty. I will show you a great many who have become worse through following it. [...] The solemn prayers of the Church are abolished, but now there are very many who never pray at all. [...]

I have never entered their conventicles, but I have sometimes seen them returning from their sermons, the countenances of all of them displaying rage, and wonderful ferocity, as though they were animated by the evil spirit. [...]

Who ever beheld in their meetings any one of them shedding tears, smiting his breast, or grieving for his sins? [...] Confession to the priest is abolished, but very few now confess to God. [...] They have fled from Judaism that they may become Epicureans.
|source=''Epistola contra quosdam qui se falso iactant evangelicos.''<ref>{{cite book |editor=Manfred Hoffmann| title=Controversies | publisher=University of Toronto Press |year=  2010 | isbn=978-1-4426-6007-6 | doi=10.3138/9781442660076 | page=}}</ref>}}