Note 15:1 — Chapter II · THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND

According to Beard, The Hibbert Lectures, 1883, p. 119, “It was a mediæval maxim, which no one thought of questioning, that the language of the Bible had four senses—the literal, the allegorical, the tropological, and the anagogical, of which the last three were mystical or spiritual, in contradistinction to the first.” The learned Erasmus, who lived and died a devout Roman Catholic, seems to have accepted this allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures. Of interpreters of the Holy Scriptures, he recommends those “who depart as far as possible from the letter.” Erasmus, Opp. (Enchiridion), v. 29, B, C, D. Quoted by Beard, p. 120.