ERASTUS, Thomas (1524-1583), was born at Baden in Switzerland on the 7th of September 1524. His family name was Liebier or Lieber, Erastus being the Greek equivalent. In 1540 he went to Basel, and in 1542 he entered the university there as student of philosophy and theology. An outbreak of the plague in 1544 drove him to Bologna, where he studied philosophy and medicine, taking his doctor’s degree in the latter faculty. His residence in Italy lasted nine years, part of the time being spent at the university of Padua. Returning northwards in 1553, he for some time held the post of physician to the counts of Henneberg. In 1558 he was appointed physician to the Elector Palatine Otto Heinrich, and at the same time he obtained the chair of medicine in the university of Heidelberg. By Frederick III., who succeeded Otto Heinrich in 1559, he was made privy-councillor and member of the church-consistory. Eminent both as a scientific and as a practical physician, he at the same time took a profound interest in the theological controversies of his day, and soon became deeply involved in them. While a student of theology at Basel he had heartily adopted the doctrines of Zwingli, and ever afterwards was prompt to avail himself of all the opportunities which his position afforded for advancing the views of the Zurich divines. At the instance of the elector he took an active part in the sacramentarian conferences held at Heidelberg in 1560 and at Maulbronn in 1564. In connexion with these conferences he published a statement and vindication of the Zwinglian doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, which, on its being criticised on the Lutheran side by Dr John Marbach of Strasburg, he followed up with a second defence (1565). Shortly after the settlement of Erastus in Heidelberg, an effort ...was made to introduce into the church of the Palatinate a strict presbyterian constitution after the Genevan model. Erastus became the leader of an influential opposition to this attempt. He made it his business to counteract what he called the “excommuni-catory fever” of the advocates of rigid discipline. In 1568 he wrote and circulated in manuscript 100 theses on the subject of church censures, maintaining that exclusion from participation in the sacraments is not a legitimate punishment for any offence whatsoever (Explicatio, ix., xxxi.). A copy of the theses was sent to Zurich, and received with some favour there, but from Geneva they elicited a vigorous rejoinder by Beza, which led to the preparation of a Con firmatio Thesium. The efforts of Erastus and his friends at Heidelberg in this matter met with little success, the presbyterian discipline being finally set up in 1570, with hardly any modification of the Genevan strictness. Meanwhile Erastus had lost the favour of the elector, and by a correspondence with some of the Socinians of Transylvania had brought himself under suspicion of being favourable to their views. One of the first acts of the newly constituted church court seems to have been a high-handed excommunication of Erastus, on the ground of his supposed Unitarianism. The sentence was reconsidered and removed in 1575, Erastus formally declaring that no one could hold the doctrine of the Trinity more firmly than he. The court physician, however, found his position at Heidelberg to be one of increasing discomfort. He accordingly returned in 1580 to Basel, where he received an appointment to the chair of ethics in 1583. He died on 31st December of the same year.
Erastus seems to have been much esteemed by his friends for his amiability, candour, and probity. As an investigator of nature, he was honourably distinguished by his adherence to a sound inductive method. Most of the works that appeared during his life time were directed against the fantastic notions of Paracelsus and his school (Dissertationum de Medicina nova Phil. Paracelsi partes quatuor, Basel, 1572; De occultis pharmacorum potestatibus, Basel, 1574; De auro potabili, Basel, 1578, and other works). That he was not in advance of his age in regard to witchcraft is shown by his treatise De lamiis et strigibus (Basel, 1578), in which he urges upon magistrates the duty of putting witches to death.
The work by which he is best known, though originally written in 1568, and afterwards revised by himself, was first published six years after his death (1589), by Castelvetro, who had married his widow. Its full title is Explicatio quaestionis gravissima; utrum excommunicatio, quatenus religionem intelligentes et amplexantes a sacramentorum usu propter admissum facinus arcet, mandato nitatur divino an excogitata sit ab hominibus. In 75 theses he seeks to show that excommunication is not a divine ordinance but a device of men, and that the sins of professing Christians are to be punished by the civil magistrate with civil penalties, not by pastors and elders denying access to the sacraments. The sacraments, being means of grace, ought not to be withheld from any one wishing to receive them. The punishment of all offences belongs to the civil magistrate exclusively. The church has no power to make laws or decrees, still less to inflict pains and penalties of any kind. Its function is simply to teach, exhort, convince, persuade. In Deut. iv. 8 it is implied that the laws and statutes of the Jewish people were the most perfect possible. That church therefore is most worthily and wisely ordered which comes nearest to the constitution of the Jewish church. But in the Jewish church we find no traces of two diverse judicatories concerning manners, the one civil, -the other ecclesiastical. No reason can be alleged why the Christian magistrate at the present day should not possess the same power which God commanded the magistrate to exercise in the Jewish commonwealth.
These views of Erastus were speedily adopted by various eminent divines in England. In the Westminster Assembly there was a distinct Erastian party, of which the most prominent members were Selden, Lightfoot, Coleman, and Whitelocke. After a controversy of many months, in which Selden, Coleman, Gillespie, and Rutherford were the most prominent disputants, the proposition that “the Lord Jesus, as King and Head of His church, hath therein appointed a government, in the hand of church-officers, distinct from the civil magistrate” was finally carried, the sole dissentient voice being that of Lightfoot. This proposition, with the whole chapter “Of Church Censures” in which it occurs, was intended and understood to contain a complete rejection of Erastian principles, and in this light it was regarded by the Erastians themselves. That chapter, however (the 30th of the Confession), was never formally ratified by the parliament.
The Anglican doctrine of “the royal supremacy in causes ecclesiastical,” it needs hardly be said, is not in any sense derived from Erastus (see the 37th Article; also Hooker’s Eccl. Pol., b. viii. and Preface). In Scotland Erastianism is disowned by all Presbyterians. They hold, as against Erastus, that there is “a government in the baud of church officers distinct from the civil magistrate.” It is well known that serious differences have arisen as to some of the practical effects of this anti-Erastian doctrine. The history of these differences will be related elsewhere. (See Scotland, Church of, and Free Church.)
An English translation of the Explicatio appeared anonymously in 1659. A new translation, enriched with an interesting preface, was published by the late Dr Robert Lee (Edin., 1844).
[1,236 words — estimated reading time: 8 minutes]