With the Protestant Reformation we come to a new era in Scriptural exegesis. Coleridge said of the Reformers, °The least of them was not inferior to Augustine and worth a brigade of Cyprians, Firmilians, and the like" ((Re mains,' III, p. 276). Calvin sweepingly asserts, °Modesty will not allow me to speak of our selves as fact would justify; and yet I will most truly declare that we have thrown more lig.ht upon the Scriptures than all the doctors who have appeared under the Papacy since its commencement. This praise even they them selves dare not deny us* ((Antid. in Conc. Trid.,' Sess. IV). The Bible seemed like a fresh discovery to the Church of that day. For the first time it became the property of the common people; and the printing press made it possible for it to become a common pos session. It had been locked up in the Latin tongue and was supposed to be the peculiar property of the priests. Translations now made it accessible to all and the Protestant preachers constantly appealed to its authority in their opposition to the usurpations and the abuses of the hierarchy. That necessitated a renewed study of the sacred text on both sides. It soon became impossible for a man to be a doctor of divinity for eight years, as Carolstadt con fessed that he had been, before he had read his New Testament. The Protestants delighted to circulate such stories as that of Sixtus of Amana concerning Albert, archbishop of May ence, who read a few pages in the New Testa ment and then put it down, saying, °I Icnow not what book this is, I only see that all things contained in it are hostile to us° (
The way was opened for an intelligent dis cussion of the Scripture text largely by the labors of Erasmus of Rotterdam. His edition of the Greek Testament became the standard text among the reformers. His translations, annotations and paraphrases entitle him to high rank as an exegete. He was independent in judgment, characterized by good sense, and a philologist without a peer. His aim was to make the meaning of the Word perfectly clear to all. He said, "I do not see why the unlearned are to be kept away, especially from the evan gelical writings, which were proclaimed alike to learned and unlearned, equally to Greeks and Scythians, as much for slaves as for the free, at the same time to men and to women, not less to peasants than to kings" (