Note 683 — Chapter XIV · (continued 2)

We may allude, for instance, to the beautiful words which, strange to say, have been described by certain Protestants as a moralistic explaining away of the true “evangelical comprehension of the person of Christ and His work”: “Ut certiore cursu queas ad felicitatem contendere, haec tibi quarta sit regula, ut totius vitae tuae Christum velut unicum scopum præfigas, ad quem unum omnia studia, omnes conatus, omne otium ac negotium conferas. Christum vero esse puta non vocem inanem, sed nihil aliud quam charitatem, simplicitatem, patientiam, puritatem, breviter, quidquid ille docuit” (“Enchiridion,” Basil., 1519, p. 93). G. Kawerau quotes from the correspondence of Justus Jonas which he edited, 1, p. 31, the words of Eobanus Hessus (1519) on the “Enchiridion”: “Plane divinum opus,” and the following utterance of Ulrich Zasius (1520) on the same, from the correspondence of Beatus Rhenanus, p. 230: “Miles christianus, quem tamen, si vel solus ab Erasmo exisset, immortali laude prædicare conveniebat, ut qui christiano homini veræ salutis compendium, brevi velut enchiridio demonstret.” “Luther und Erasmus,” in “Deutsch-Evangel. Blätter,” 1906, Hft. 1, in the reprint, p. 4.