I came across this in the book _Early sources of English Unitarian Christianity_ By Amy Gaston C.A. Bonet-Maury and I thought my readers might enjoy it:
This is the judicial examination to which an Anabaptist preacher in the province of Flanders, Herman van Flekwijk (burnt at Bruges, 10 June, 1569), was subjected by Cornelis Adriaans, of the Franciscan convent at Dordrecht, and inquisitor at Bruges, in presence of the Secretary and of the Clerk of the Inquisition:
Inquisitor. "What! Don't you believe that Christ is the second person of the Holy Trinity?"
Anabaptist. "We never call things but as they are called in Scripture The Scripture speaks of One God, the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit."
Inq. "If you had read the Creed of St. Athanasius, you would have found in it 'God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.'"
Anab. "I am a stranger to the Creed of St. Athanasius. It is sufficient for me to believe in the living God, and that Christ is the Son of the living God, as Peter believed; and to believe in the Holy Spirit, which the Father hath poured out upon us through Jesus Christ our Lord, as Paul says."
Inq. "You are an impertinent fellow, to fancy that God pours out His Spirit upon you, who do not believe that the Holy Spirit is God! You have borrowed those heretical opinions from the diabolical books of the cursed Erasmus, of Rotterdam, who, in his Preface to the Works of St. Hilary, pretends that this holy man says, at the end of his twelfth Book, 'That the Holy Spirit is not called God in any part of the Scripture; and that we are so bold as to call Him so, though the Fathers of the Church scrupled to give Him that name.' Will you be a follower of that Antitrinitarian?"....
Anab. "God forbid I should deny the divinity of Christ! We believe that he is a divine and heavenly person;.... I call him 'the Son of the living God,' as Peter does, and 'the Lord,' as the other Apostles call him. He is called in the Acts of the Apostles, 'Jesus of Nazareth, whom God raised from the dead.' And Paul calls him 'that man by whom God shall judge the world in righteousness.'"
Inq. "These are the wretched arguments of the cursed Erasmus, in his small treatise 'On Prayer,' and in his 'Apology to the Bishop of Seville.' If you are contented to call Christ the 'Son of God,' you do not give him a more eminent title than that which St. Luke gives to Adam," ....
Anab. "God forbid! We believe that the body of Christ is not earthly, like that of Adam, but that he is a heavenly man, as Paul says." ....
Inq. "But St. John says . . . . 'There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one.'"
Anab. "I have often heard that Erasmus, in his Annotations upon that passage, shows that this text is not in the Greek original."
"Thereupon Broer Cornelis, turning to the Secretary and the Clerk of the Inquisition, said: 'Sirs, what think you of this? Am I to blame because I attack so frequently in my sermons Erasmus, that cursed Antitrinitarian? Erasmus has done worse still. He says in his 'Annotations upon the Gospel according to St. Luke,' chapter iv. ver. 22, that a strange falsification has crept into the holy Scripture, by interpolating some words, on account of the heretics. Nay, this Antitrinitarian whom you see here, and the arch-heretic Erasmus, reproach us with having added these words, 'Who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen,' in Rom. ix. 5. Or else they pretend that this doxology ought to be translated thus: 'Of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all. God be blessed for ever. Amen.'"
We have reproduced this lengthy extract from an Inquisitorial report of 1569, because it exhibits a lively picture of the extent to which Anabaptism was saturated with Antitrinitarian ideas, as well as of the degree of influence exercised by the exegesis of Erasmus on the Christology of the Reformers. It is not difficult to recognise traces of this influence in Luther's Bible and in Calvin's Commentaries. Still more decidedly was it felt in England, where Erasmus' Annotations and his Paraphrases upon the New Testament were officially introduced into every parish (1547). Moreover, the great missionary of the Renascence had resided at Oxford for several years (1498—1500), had been professor at Cambridge (1509), and had lived in intimate relations with the leaders of the new learning in England, John Colet, Linacre and Latimer. It is worth while, therefore, to investigate the measure of his own approach to Unitarian Christianity.
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