He replies: A certain Franciscan keeps reviling the New Testament of Erasmus in his sermons.

Well, one day I called on him in private, seized him by the hair with my left hand and punished him with my right.

I gave him so sound a drubbing that I reduced his whole face to a mere jelly.

What do you say to that?
Isn't that maintaining the gospel?
And then, by way of absolution for his sins I took this book [Erasmus's New Testament, a folio bound with brass] and gave him three resounding whacks on the head in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
"That," replies his friend, "was truly evangelic; defending the gospel by the gospel.

But really it is time you were turning from a brute beast into a man." So it was that the man who was at once the gentlest Christian, the leading scholar, and the keenest wit of his age insinuated his opinions without seeming to attack anything.