 Occasionally Erasmus uses metaphors to indicate the relationship between words and things, likening them to clothing /body (“style is to thought as clothes are to the body”, CWE 24: 306) or vessel/content (“mystery concealed by the letter”, CWE 66: 32), but these expressions are no more than apt figures of speech. Similarly, a statement in his annotations on the New Testament appears to be an instance of ideational epistemology. Commenting on John 1:1 (“In the beginning was the word”) and on the implications of rendering Greek logos into Latin using sermo or verbum, Erasmus explains that verbum is used “of what sounds rather than of what is conceived in the mind”, although “things the voice expresses are signs of the states that are present first in the mind” and therefore may also be called verbum. He adds: “Thinking is, as it were, talking to oneself” (CWE 73: 35–6). In this case, too, Erasmus’ remarks remain without solid context.