Note 686 — Chapter VI

Seckendorf took hold of a few words in a letter of Erasmus, to insinuate that he had taken a side against his conscience in writing his treatise, De Libero Arbitrio. Jortin, acute as he was, seems to have understood the passage the same way, and endeavours to explain away the sense, as if he meant only that he had undertaken the task unwillingly. Milner of course repeats the imputation; though it must be owned that, perceiving the absurdity of making Erasmus deny what in all his writings appears to have been his real opinion, he adopts Jortin’s solution. I am persuaded that they are all mistaken, and that Erasmus was no more referring to his treatise against Luther, than to the Trojan war. The words occur in an answer to a letter of Vives, written from London, wherein he had blamed some passages in the Colloquies on the usual grounds of their freedom as to ecclesiastical practices. Erasmus, rather piqued at this, after replying to the observations, insinuates to Vives, that the latter had not written of his own free will, but at the instigation of some superior. Verum, ut ingenue dicam, perdidimus liberum arbitrium. Illic mihi aliud dictabat animus, aliud scribebat calamus. By a figure of speech far from unusual, he delicately suggests his own suspicion as Vives’s apology. And the next letter of Vives leaves no room for doubt: Liberum arbitrium non perdidimus, quod tu asserueris,—words, that could have no possible meaning upon the hypothesis of Seckendorf. There is nothing in the context that can justify it; and it is equally difficult to maintain the interpretation Jortin gives of the phrase, aliud dictabat animus, aliud scribebat calamus, which can mean nothing but that he wrote what he did not think. The letters are Dcccxxix. Dccclxxi. Dccclxxvi. in Erasmus’s Epistles; or the reader may turn to Jortin, i. 413.