Paraclesis
The exhortation to the reader that Erasmus placed before his New Testament of 1516. It urges every Christian to read the Gospels and the letters of Paul and wishes them translated into all languages.
Read the text at history.hanover.edu ↗Latin text in the 1516 edition (e-rara) ↗
Paraclesis is Greek for “exhortation”. Erasmus printed it as the first preface of his Novum Instrumentum omne (1516). It sets out what he calls the philosophy of Christ, a way of life learned from the Gospels and the apostles’ letters, and argues that this learning belongs to all the baptised and not to theologians alone.
The English version linked here was printed at Antwerp in 1529; its translator is not named, and the page gives an excerpt, not the whole. The translator added a few words of his own at the end, as the editor’s note points out. The Latin original can be read in the facsimile of the 1516 edition.
Cited in
- 1516, firm date