ERASTUS
515
ERASTUS
council proceeded to excommunicate Erastus on the
ground of his alleged Unitarianism. After a long
further controversy, he succeeded in convincing them
that this allegation was false; and the excommunica-
tion was removed in 1575; but his position had be-
come a difficult one, and five years later he resigned
his office. He returned to Basle, where he taught
ethics for a short time, imtil his death. On his tomb
in St. Martin's church he is described as "an acute
philosopher, a clever physician, and a sincere theolo-
gian". He left behind him the reputation of an up-
right life, with great amiability of character, coupled
with an absorbing zeal for learning. He took an ac-
tive part in combating the superstitions of astrology;
but he showed that he was not free from the prejudices
of his day by advocating the killing of witches.
The great work by which Erastus is known is his "Seventy-five Theses", to which we have already alluded. They were never printed in his lifetime, but during his last illness he expressed a desire that they should be published, and Castelvetro, who married his widow, carried out his wishes. The "Theses" and " Confirmatio thesium ' ' appeared together in 1589, the printer's name and place being suppressed from mo- tives of prudence. The central question about which the "Theses" turned was that of excommunication. The term is not, however, used by Erastus in the Catholic sense as excluding the delincjuent from the society or membership of the Church. The excom- munication to which he alludes was the exclusion of those of bad life from participation in the sacraments. He explains what he means in the introduction to the " Theses ' ' which he wrote at the end of his life. " It is about sixteen years ago", he WTites, "since some men were seized on by a certain excommunicatory fever, which they did adorn with the title of ecclesiastical discipline. . . . They affirmed the manner thereof to be this; that some certain presbyters should sit in the name of the whole Church and should judge who were worthy or unworthy to come unto the Lord's Supper." The first eight theses are devoted to a detailed expla- nation of the various senses in which the word excom- munication is used, and in the ninth Erastus defines the issue with which he is concerned: "This, then, is the question, whether any command or any example can be produced from Holy Scriptures requiring or intimating that such persons [i. e. sinners] should be excluded from the sacraments." In the following thesis (x) he says: "Our answer is that none such can be found, but rather that many, as well examples as precepts, of an opposite tendency, occur everywhere in the Bible." The following twenty-eight theses are devoted to developing and maintaining his conclu- sions, before proceeding in the last half of his work to answer possible objections.
The chief argument on which Erastus bases his whole system is an analogy between the Jewish and Christian Dispensations, and it is exactly here that the fallacy of his conclusions becomes manifest. A Catho- lic, indeed, would be less likely to fall into the error of looking upon the Sacrament of the Eucharist and the Sacrifice of the Mass as in any close w.iy analogous to the Sacrifices of the Old Law, and the slaying of the paschal lamb ; or the relation of the ceremonial law to the political law of the Jews as in any way realized or realizable in the most Christian of states. To a Prot- estant who looked upon the Bible as the sole source of Revelation this wasdifferent. Erastus argued that by the Law of Moses no one was excluded from the offer- ing of the paschal sacrifice, but every male was com- manded to observe it under pain of death ; and with respect to the ordinary sacrifices in the Temple, not only was no one excluded from them, but there was a positive command for all to assist at least three times a year, on the chief feasts, viz. Pasch, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. In illustration of the Jewish tradition, he also pointed to the conduct of St. John, who admin-
istered his baptism to all, good and bad indiscrimin-
ately. He laid great stress also on Christ Himself
having admitted Judas to the participation of the
Holy Communion at its institution ; though he grants
that this is not certain, as some commentators are of
opinion that the traitor had already gone out, at any
rate Judas was never publicly or even privately ex-
cluded; and, in any case, he shared in the celebration
of the pasch, showing that Christ promulgated no law
of exclusion.
A f lu-ther argument is drawn from the nature of the sacraments themselves, again bringing into promi- nence the different point of view between Protestants and Catholics; for Erastus looked upon the "preach- ing of the Word" as equal in sacredness with the sacraments. "I ask", he said, "are the sacraments superior in authority and dignity to the Word? Are they more useful and necessary? None of those who have been saved were saved without the Word; but without sacraments, especially without the Lord's Supper, there doubtless might be, and there have been many saved who, however, did not despise these ordinances. So seems the Apostle to have judged when he wrote that he was sent not to baptize but to preach the Word. Do not almost all divines hold the sacraments to be visible words and to exhibit to the eyes what words express to the ear? Why, then, do we go about to exclude nobody from the Word, while from the sacraments, especially the Lord's Supper, we would exclude some, and that contrary to, or without, the express command of God?" (thesis xxxviii).
He deals at some length (thesis xv) with the Jewish law as to the "unclean", contending that uncleanness was by no means intended to typify sin; for, in that case, he argues, since the unclean were excluded from sacrifice while the sinful were not, it would follow that those who were blameless — for legal uncleanness was incurred by such acts as contact with the dead, etc. — were, from being types of sinners, punished more severely than sinners themselves; this he considers a reductio ad absurdum. He contended that unclean- ness was a figure, " not of a work, but of a quality — even our depraved nature"; and he adds, "neither did it prefigure in what manner this ought to be pun- ished [in the Chm'ch on earth], for Moses taught this in plain and explicit terms, but what should be our con- dition in a future life." In meeting the question of the expulsion from the synagogues alluded to by Christ, Erastus contended (thesis xxii) that this was a merely civil act: for the synagogues were also law courts ; and, in fact, those who were expelled from the sjTiagogues were not excluded from the Temple. He added also that he would see no difficulty, even other- wise, in admitting that abuses might have crept into the Jewish as into the Christian Church, and that the Pharisees might have acted in a spirit out of keeping with the true and proper interpretation of the Law.
Out of the seventy-five theses of Erastus, the first seventy-two are devoted to the question of excommu- nication : it is only in the last three that the general rela- tion of the Church to the State, which comes as a corol- lary to his theory, is discussed. This can be given in his own words. " I see no reason", he says, " why the Chris- tian magistrate at the present day should not possess the same power which God commanded the magis- trate to exercise in the Jewish commonwealth. Do we imagine that we are able to continue a better con- stitution of Church and State than that?" (thesis Ixxiii). He then proceeds to discuss the position of the magistrate in the Jewish nation, and argues in the following thesis (Ixxiv) that "if that Church and State were most wisely founded, arranged, and ap- pointed, any other must merit approliation which approaches to its form as nearly as present times and circumstances will permit. So that wherever the magistrate is godly, there is no need of any other au- thority under any other pretension or title to rule or
