Establishing Metaphor
The essay commences with a metaphorical image to help establish the long historical record of its central premise. The metaphor so engaged has the intent of conveying to the reader that the premise to be reasons does not just trace back far into the historical record, but is one which has been a source of debate and argument:
“Among the difficulties, of which not a few crop up in Holy Scripture, there is hardly a more tangled labyrinth than that of free choice”
Intellectual Combat
Erasmus engages an extended use of metaphor to situate the precision of his argument. He frames his intellectual battle of wits within the arena of bloodsport and sweaty sports:
“Furthermore, just in case anyone should mistake this for a regular gladiatorial combat, I shall confine my controversy strictly to this one doctrine… To be sure, I know that I was not built for wrestling matches: there is surely nobody less practiced in this kind of thing than I, who have always had an inner temperamental horror of fighting, and who have always preferred to sport in the wider plains of the Muses rather than to brandish a sword in a hand-to-hand fight.”
Self-Deprecation
The stimulant for this essay is direct and narrowly focused: a response to the theorizing of Martin Luther. Early in the essay, Erasmus uses a time-honored rhetorical device of reducing his stature in the face of a titanic figure before anyone else has the chance. This is done through simile:
“Here I know there will be those who will forthwith stop their ears, crying out, “The rivers run backward” — dare Erasmus attack Luther, like the fly the elephant?”
The Anti-Q
The author makes plain that he does not wish to accept someone’s assertion automatically simply because it happens to coincide with his own presently arrived-at opinion. He willingly brings a skepticism to any new information regardless of whether it conforms or dissents to his prevailing opinion yet is also willing to embrace oppositional views when they are presented with logic. His view toward those who reject this skeptical open-mindedness instantly clears up the seeming paradox:
“I prefer this disposition of mine to that with which I see some people endowed who are so uncontrollably attached to their own opinion that they cannot bear anything which dissents from it; but they twist whatever they read in the Scriptures into an assertion of an opinion which they have embraced once for all. They are like young men who love a girl so immoderately that they imagine they see their beloved wherever they turn”
Blessed are the Caretakers
Thank goodness for the caretakers of humanity. Those people blessed with the confidence that allows them to assume they know which information should be shared with the “common people” and which information must at all times be kept hidden from the herd:
“some things there are of such a kind that, even if they were true and might be known, it would not be proper to prostitute them before common ears.”
