Collected Works of Erasmus, Volume 6, The Correspondence of Erasmus

and predestination in Hooker's works" (xxxvii).Together, the Fragments outline an important treatise on free will, grace, and predestination, the most vexed topics raised by A Christian Letter.This material is an expansion and clarification of Hooker's earlier work rather than a new departure, but it repre- sents the cause to which Hooker fervently devoted his last energies.He clears himself especially of the charges of urging too great a freedom of the will, and of teaching the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.He shows a rever- ence for Calvin along with a profound distrust of Calvin's followers who, like many Roman Catholics, make of their church an institution that professes to be above human error.Hooker's marginal notes, at times very difficult to read, are here scrupulously transcribed with the help of two seventeenth-century transcriptions, themselves not always reliable.The sole sixteenth-century quarto of ^4 Christian Letter itself poses no special textual difficulties.The copy text for the Dublin Frag- ments is evidently a seventeenthcentury transcription.Variants between copy text and adopted reading throughout this volume are nonsubstantive, such as the correcting of obvious misprints or changing Italian font to roman.An appendix records all such departures from copy text.A learned and thorough commentary deals chiefly with Church authorities and clarification of doctrinal points.The editor is sympathetic toward Hooker but without scholarly bias.The volume is handsomely and generously illustrated with sample pages, chiefly showing Hooker's careful writing in the margins and his alteration of words as he proceeded.This is an attractively prepared volume, and a fitting commentary on those that have gone before

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