But on the contrary, the more dogmas there are, the more fruitful is the ground in producing heresies.

Never was the Christian faith purer or more undefiled than when the world was content with a single creed, and that the shortest creed we have." It is touching even now to listen to such an appeal of reason and of culture against the tide of dogmatism which was soon to flood Christendom with Augsburg Confessions and Creeds of Pope Pius and Westminster Catechisms and Thirty-nine Articles.
[Sidenote: The New Testament of Erasmus] But the principles which Erasmus urged in his "Jerome" were urged with far greater clearness and force in a work that laid the foundation of the future Reformation, the edition of the Greek Testament on which he had been engaged at Cambridge and whose production was almost wholly due to the encouragement and assistance he received from English scholars.

In itself the book was a bold defiance of theological tradition.

It set aside the Latin version of the Vulgate which had secured universal acceptance in the Church.

Its method of interpretation was based, not on received dogmas, but on the literal meaning of the text.