humanities which were his first object. But he always held, and never shrank from saying, that Luther had been hounded into revolt; that the Roman Curia had to thank their own blindness and blundering, for converting a harmless necessary reformer into a rebel. Writing to Pirckheimer in September 1520, he expresses his vehement sorrow (mihi vehementer dolere ') that a man from whom he had hoped so much good should have been driven wild by rabid clamours.' And ten years afterwards, reviewing the course of events in a striking letter to Bishop (afterwards Cardinal) Sadoleto, he says: "If throughout the world you see terrible tumults arise, fatal to Germany, and still more destructive to the Church, remeinber that Erasmus foretold them. In the first place they should have let alone Luther and his theses about indulgences,* and not have poured oil upon the flame. Then it was a great mistake to take action by means of monks, whom almost every one hates, and to have recourse to impotent bellowings among the people, and to the burning of men and books: the true course would have been to deal with the matter at issue in treatises to be circulated among the learned. Lastly, it would have been better to connive at, to put up with these people, just as we have put up with gipsies and Jews. Time itself often brings a cure for evils beyond the power of medicine. This I never cease to urge; but I did not even obtain a hearing: whether I liked it or not, I was set down as a supporter of schisms.'

The imputation was utterly unfounded. Erasmus never for one moment thought of joining Luther or of quitting the communion of Rome. He had no taste for martyrdom, but he protested—and his sincerity is unquestionable-that he would rather die ten times over than associate himself with any sect seceding from the Church.' On the other hand, he was as little disposed to make common cause with Luther's enemies, who were also the enemies of that ' good learning' which it was the main business of his life to advance, the fautors of and traders in those superstitions and corruptions against which, from first to last, he waged such vigorous war. He speaks, in a letter written to Pirckheimer in 1522, of the age as a monstrous epoch (' seculum prodigiosum '), in which it was most difficult to know what course to take. On the one hand were those who, acting in the name

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Mr. Froude translates (p. 347): The first mistake was to neglect Luther's protest against indulgences,' which is precisely the contrary of what Erasmus says. A little lower down in Mr. Froude's translation we read: 'Luther's books were burnt when they ought to have been read and studied by earnest and serious people.' There is not one word of this in the original.

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of the Pope, were trying to draw tighter the bonds of the old tyranny, instead of relaxing them." 'On the other hand,' he continues, those who under the name of Luther profess to vindicate Evangelical liberty, act in I know not what spirit. Certainly many adhere to them whom I should not like to have as adherents if the matter were any affair of mine. Meanwhile,' he adds, Christian charity is rent asunder, consciences are troubled, and the lewdly disposed (qui propensi sunt suapte natura ad licentiam') easily find pretexts for licence in the writings of Luther.'* 'Good Erasmus in an honest mean,' sings Pope, justly enough. But his moderation seemed, to the followers of Luther, cowardice; to Luther's most active opponents, hypocrisy. Foremost among his detractors was his old friend Aleander, who as Papal legate brought to Germany the Bull against Luther, and whose violence did much to aggravate the situation. It was a special infelicity of his position, as he complains in several of his letters, that this old familiar friend in whom he trusted, who also did eat of his bread and drink of his cup, in those bright Venetian days, laid great wait for him, adopting and enforcing the accusations of the monks and theologians that he it was who was the real author of Luther's revolt-nay, that he still secretly favoured and promoted it and losing no opportunity of putting that view before the Pope. Aleander it probably was, who coined the saying, Ο Λουθηρὸς ἐρασμίζει, ὁ Ἐρασμὸς λουθηρίζει. Certainly, at this period, Erasmus's worst foes were those of his own household. In 1521 the feeling of his monkish and theological opponents in Flanders, where he had chiefly resided for the previous five years, was so strong against him, that he thought it expedient to depart to Basle.

Here he was soon pressed, by Catholic princes and prelates from all quarters-nay, by his old friend Adrian of Utrecht, who on the death of Leo X. in 1520 was elected to the Papal Chair-to write against Luther. He shrank from complying with these requests. He felt that if he spoke out his whole mind, some who sought his aid would rather that he had kept silence. Perhaps, too, like Cardinal Newman upon a wellremembered occasion, he was not without resentment that those

Ep. DCXVIII. The words Rursus qui sub nomine Lutheri præ se ferunt vindicationem Evangelicæ libertatis, nescio quo spiritu rem gerunt: certe multi se admiscent qui malim non admiscere si meum esset negotium,' are grotesquely translated by Mr. Froude: "The friends of liberty who call themselves Lutherans, are possessed by some spirit, of what kind I know not, while both sorts have a finger in the management of things, which neither of them should touch if I could have my way' (p. 280). In suspenso sunt hominum conscientia' he renders' conscience has run wild'!

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who by their wild words and overbearing deeds' had kindled the fire in spite of his warnings, should leave to others the task of putting out the flame.' But as time went on Luther was led to apply himself to the construction of religious dogmas for his followers. Erasmus viewed the result with disapproval and dismay. It appeared to him that the Reformer's new Scholasticism was as bad as, or worse than, the old. In particular he judged Luther's denial of free will as undermining the foundations of ordered human existence. He applied himself to confute it; but he did not like the task. It was-so he expressed himself in one of his letters-as though the lover of the Muses should descend into the gladiatorial arena. But the Peasants' War in 1524 removed his lingering hesitations. This outbreak appeared to him the direct result of Luther's teachings. He sent his book De Libero Arbitrio' to the printer. It appeared in September of that year.

We do not propose to enter here upon a critical examination of this work. Indeed, if judged from a purely metaphysical point of view, it can hardly be said to merit such examination. We may content ourselves with observing that its dialectic, if not very profound, is skilful and learned; that it deals with the great question it discusses in a spirit of Christian courtesy and philosophical moderation; that it expresses effectively the dictates of common sense and the determinations of conscience against Luther's fatalism. Luther himself felt that it went to the very heart of his doctrine. He confesses as much in the book De Servo Arbitrio,' which he wrote in reply. That treatise is not very creditable to him. His argument is weak. He seeks to bolster it up by vituperation and violence. He describes Erasmus as an impious person, a blasphemer, an unbeliever, an Epicurean; one who fears to displease the powerful, who puts his word and his faith at the disposal of princes. Luther's followers took their cue from their master. They had been wont to celebrate the great Humanist as the Prince of Literature, the Star of Germany, the Avenger of the ancient theology. Sceptic, Atheist, Arian, Pelagian, were the terms they now applied to him. On the other hand, the monks likened him to a fox laying waste the vineyard of the Lord. They called him another and a worse Lucian, who by his bitter mocking had done more harm to the faith than Luther himself. We read of a certain doctor of divinity who kept his picture on purpose to have the pleasure of spitting upon it from time to time. His 'Colloquies,' which appeared in the same year* as his book

*A few of them had been previously published.

'De

'De Libero Arbitrio,' were not calculated to conciliate his monastic and theological opponents. M. Feugère observes: L'ouvrage, en effet, donnait prise par bien de côtés à ceux qui le poursuivaient au nom de la foi Catholique. Dans ces pages alertes il y a des saillies moqueuses, des irrévérences à la Lucien.' The popularity of the book was enormous. The astonishing number of twenty-four thousand copies found purchasers in a few months. Next to the Praise of Folly,' it is still the best known of his works. Its light and graceful humour, its piquant irony, its keen and subtle delineation of life and character, invest it with a charm which age cannot wither.

Twelve years more of life remained to Erasmus. They were twelve years of unwearied work, of almost uninterrupted physical suffering, and of ever increasing sadness as the political and religious horizon grew darker and darker. The sort of literary dictatorship which he had once exercised throughout Europe had passed away. But to the last he was the centre and leader of sensible, tolerant, disinterested men, who desired to conciliate piety towards the past with faith in the future; who shrank alike from the obscurantism of the monks and the iconoclasm of Luther. Until the year 1529, he abode in Basle. Then a variety of Lutheranism, devised by Ecolampadius, was established there. The Catholic worship was prohibited. And the intolerance of Protestant zealots forced him to quit that city; just as, eight years before, the intolerance of Catholic zealots had driven him from Louvain. Much as he desired the abolition of abuses, he was by no means in sympathy with those who 'call the Church's desolation

A godly thorough reformation.'

In his letters of this period, he vividly depicts their ravages : statues shattered, shrines rifled, altars cast down, paintings whitewashed, all that was precious and beautiful defiled and destroyed. The sour solemnities which they substituted for the ancient rites he viewed with disdain and dislike. Some of the leaders of the new faith were among his personal friends, and he never renounced their friendship. But the practical fruits of their movement in the rank and file of their followers filled him with dismay and disgust. The triumph of the Lutherans,' he writes, "is the death of good learning. Wealth and wives are their real objects. For the rest, their gospel supplies them with all they want-that is, permission to live as they like.' Times of revolution are always times of relaxed morals. It is notable that of all the sectaries of that

period the Anabaptists seem to have been the purest livers. From Basle Erasmus went to Freiburg, which he reached at the end of April or the beginning of May 1529. On arriving there, he found a rumour current of his own decease. He writes: This is not altogether a lie of the Dominicans and the Franciscans. I am struggling with that sergeant of death, the stone, to say nothing of old age-which indeed does not give me much to complain of-or of my excessive literary work, or of my constant fighting with beasts of all kinds that everywhere raise their monstrous heads. I know not whether such an existence should be called life. But all this would not trouble me, were it not that in these days I see everything going from bad to worse. I hear the voices of orthodox and of heretics, of Catholics and of anti-Catholics: nowhere do I see Christ. For a long time the world has been in travail. Unless the hand of

Christ directs the birth, I discern no hope.' To that hope he clings to the last, labouring in all ways to make straight the paths for a better order, in which peace through the truth might be realized: willing to become all things to all men, so that he might gain them for this sacred cause.

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To the last he trusted that it might be still possible to stem the tide of revolution by reform, to reconcile ecclesiastical unity with rational liberty. Melanchthon, one of the purest and most candid souls in the Lutheran ranks, earnestly seconded him in these efforts. One of the last works of Erasmus was his little tractate, De Amabili Ecclesiæ Concordia,' a beautiful and touching plea for peace. It was published in 1533, three years before his death. If carefully and dispassionately read-and especially if read in connection with his letters-it leaves no room for doubt as to his religious views. On the one hand, he did not call in question any dogma actually defined by the Church. But, like Cardinal Newman, he protested against theologians who sought to impose as articles of faith their own opinions; who made use of their own private judgment to anathematize the private judgment of others. It must be remembered that, when he wrote, many points subsequently decided by the Council of Trent were open questions. It must be remembered, too, that while in his discussions of theological subjects he is perfectly frank, stating fully the arguments on both sides, extenuating no difficulties, concealing no apparent contradictions,

*

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* Readers of Mr. Froude's abridged translation' of Ep. DLXIII. might suppose otherwise (p. 260): I think the Church has defined many points, which might have been left open without hurt to the faith.' On reference to the original it will be seen that Erasmus speaks not of definitions of the Church, but of definitions of certain Theologians: Fateor quædam esse definita per Theologos quosdam,' &c.

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