Was the Reformation necessary?-VII

Erasmus. The complaint of Peace.

Now if in courts of judicature, the judge will not admit of suits which are frivolous and vexatious; if he will not admit of all sorts of evidence, especially that which arises from a personal pique and resentment, how happens it, that in a business of far more consequence to human nature even than courts of judicature, in an affair the most odious and abominable, such as the promoting discord among human creatures and whole neighbouring nations, causes the most frivolous and vexatious are freely admitted as competent and valid. Let the lovers of discord, and the promoters of bloodshed between nations, divided only by a name and a channel, rather reflect that this world, the whole of the planet called earth, is the common country of all who live and breath upon it, if the title of one’s country is allowed to be a sufficient reason for unity among fellow-countrymen; and let them also remember, that all men, however distinguished by political or accidental causes, are sprung from the same parents, if consanguinity and affinity are allowed to be available to concord and peace. If the Church also is a subdivision of this one great universal family, a family of itself consisting of all who belong to that Church, and if the being of the same family necessarily connects all the members in a common interest and a common regard for each other, then the opposers must be ingenious in their malice, if they can deny, that all who are of the same Church, the grand catholic Church of all christendom, must also have a common interest, a common regard for each other, and, therefore, be united in love.

In private life you bear with some things in a brother in law, which you bear with only because he is a brother in law; and will you bear with nothing in him who by the tie of the same religion is also a brother? You pardon many little offences on account of nearness of kindred, and will you pardon nothing on account of affinity founded in religion? Yet there is, no doubt, but the closest possible tie among all the christian brotherhood, is confraternity in Christ.

Why are you always fixing your attention upon the sore place, where the insult or injury received from a fellow-creature festers and rankles? If you seek peace and ensue it, as you ought to do, you will rather say to yourself: “He hurt me in this instance, this is true; but in other instaces he has often served and gratified me, and in this one, he was, perhaps, incited to momentary wrong by passion, mistake, or by another impulse”. As in the poet Homer, the persons who seek to effect a reconciliation between Agamemnon nd Achilles, throw all the blame of their quarrel to goddess Ate; so in real life, offences that cannot be excused consistently with strict veracity, should good-naturedly be imputed to ill-fortune, or, if you please, to a man’s evil genius; that the resentment may be transferred from men to those imaginary beings, who can bear the load, however great, without the slightest inconvenience.