this passage makes plain enough, in ideal terms baptismal vows were something all individuals should take for themselves once they understood what the vows implied. What we have in Erasmus, then, is an ideal world consisting of Christ’s teachings, in which baptism is the most important sacrament, for it is here that the disciple swears an oath of allegiance to his Master. The real world of Christianity, however, the world in which Erasmus found himself, was a mere shadow of this ideal world. Indeed,