Chapter VIII: Beginnings of the Reformation--Correspondence of 1518-1519 (1)

On many accounts, the residence at Louvain ought to have been one of the most satisfactory of Erasmus' life. He was in the midst of a congenial activity not limited by any prescribed duties, free from great anxiety about money, secure at any moment of some honourable appointment if he chose to accept it, in fairly good health, and with working powers quite undiminished by advancing years.

In the year 1518 there can be no question that the name of Erasmus was the most widely known and honoured among European scholars. His New Testament with its display of learning and its revelation of a new principle of criticism, had demonstrated his character as a serious thinker upon the most important questions of religious faith and practice. If we seek to define this principle we shall be unable to fix it by any categories of philosophy or of theological precedent. In the last analysis we are brought back every time to the principle of common sense working upon the accepted dogmatic bases of the existing church system.

His freedom of speech had always been kept carefully within the bounds of doctrinal orthodoxy. He could safely defy his critics to point to a single instance of anything that might by any reasonable interpretation be described as heresy. He knew that in his criticism, so far as it had gone, he was supported by the best opinion of the men of enlightenment everywhere, and relying upon this support he could put on the confident tone of a man who feels himself on the winning side.

The generation in which Erasmus had grown up to his fiftieth year was eminently one of progress in every form of enlightenment and expansion. He was twenty-five when Columbus discovered America and gave the first impulse to that intoxicating sense of limitless possibility which from time to time has seized upon a generation of men and carried it on to great triumphs--but always also to disappointments more keenly felt than its successes. Along with the discovery of the earth had gone with equal, even with more rapid pace, the discovery of man. The ban which throughout the Middle Ages had lain upon the human spirit as individual, with powers of its own and the right to use them, was rapidly being lifted. The cunning plebeian who had learned how to mix the subtle ingredients of gunpowder and put it into the hands of his fellow-plebeians, had taught the world an argument against the rights of princes, more potent than all the philosophers from Marsiglio of Padua down had been able to furnish. That other plebeian group who had lit upon the marvellously simple device of multiplying copies of writings by means of movable types, had opened up possibilities of education and therefore of achievement, whose end the imagination of man could not compass.

At first, doubtless, this vast outlook into the unknown had terrified as well as fascinated the world. All established institutions whose claim to existence rested upon an undisputed tradition, trembled lest their foundation should be shaken. Princes dreaded the union of the long-oppressed peasants and citizens with gunpowder in their hands. The guardians of the treasure of thought which had come down from the past shuddered at the spreading of "dangerous" ideas broadcast through the land by the busy printing-press.

But gradually these apprehensions had been allayed. The social revolution threatened by gunpowder was delayed as has been so far that which is threatened by dynamite. Economic laws would not be broken and the forces of discontent, active during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, had been gradually brought into an apparent harmony with the forces of order and tradition. Once more the great leading powers had come out of a long conflict victorious, though modified. The state-governments had overcome the attacks of constitutionalism, and seemed to be more independent of control than ever. The monarchy of Francis I., of Henry VIII., and Charles V. seemed to have beaten down every opposition, but it had also learned its lessons. If it would control the public life of its several states, it must itself meet the evident demands of its subjects, so far as it could do so without abandoning its own supreme prerogative. So the papacy, threatened by the aggressive constitutionalism of the fifteenth-century councils, had overcome that danger and during the lifetime of Erasmus had seemed to recover more than its ancient prestige. But it had purchased this recovery by vast adjustments to conditions it could not change. It, too, in its turn had become "enlightened" and gone so far into the prevailing liberalism of thought that it had deprived it of its sting. It might well seem an idle task to turn the weapons of the "higher criticism" against a papacy which was itself supporting the cause of critical learning with every resource at its command.

No greater proof of this apparent readjustment of opposing forces could be offered than the dedication of Erasmus' New Testament, the ripest product of the critical scholarship of the time, to Pope Leo himself. It was a bold stroke, but it paid. The unstinted approval of the pope gave Erasmus a backing worth more to him at the moment than any praise of scholars like himself. But it bound him also the more firmly to an allegiance he dared not break, lest the form of success most precious to him in life should be endangered.

We have spoken of the constitutional opposition to the papacy by the fifteenth-century councils. Parallel with this and often combined with it had gone an opposition growing out of national interests. This, too, the papacy seemed to have overcome by the same policy of adjustment. It had allowed the largest scope to national control of the Church consistent with its supreme leadership, and had even given emphasis to the national idea by pushing to the utmost its claim to be one among the powers of Europe. The whole political activity of the papacy during this most active generation was based upon a recognition of the national states and a steady aim to gain their recognition in turn for its own well developed sovereignty. A pope's "niece" or "nephew" was as good a _parti_ for a royal house as the offspring of any princely family in Europe.

So complete, apparently, was this adjustment of all the forces of European society that the great outbreak of the Lutheran reform movement was a complete surprise and an incredible shock to all established institutions. The historian can, indeed, trace with perfect continuity the lines of development which centre in that wonderful movement, when a monk, in an obscure town in the remote north of Germany, drew the eyes of all Europe to himself by gathering up into one passionate expression the long-suppressed protest against the tyranny of the dominant church system. But, on the surface of things, in the year 1517, there was little to point to this historic continuity. To all appearance the great impulse of Wiclif in England had died out with the suppression of open Lollardry just a hundred years before. John Hus, the spiritual heir of Wiclif, had been sacrificed at Constance in 1415 to a combination of forces, some of which were to prove themselves in reality the stoutest allies of the ideas he represented. True, the fires at Constance had kindled a flame in Bohemia, which defied all efforts of pope and emperor to put it out until dissensions within the party of revolt scattered and quenched the material on which it fed. But after the Council at Basel (1431-1443) the great readjustment carried Bohemia, too, along into the general scheme of conciliation. At that moment a party, henceforth to be known as the party of enlightenment, seized upon the papacy, and with Thomas Parentucelli (Nicholas V., 1447-1455) began that series of humanistic popes, Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pius II., 1458-1464), Giuliano delle Rovere (Julius II., 1503-1513), and Giovanni de' Medici (Leo X., 1513-1521), who were ready to sacrifice all other interests to the aggrandisement of their personal power and the advancement of a higher cultivation and refinement of life.

It must be said that in the things men cared most about in the two generations before the year 1517, the government of the Church was such as suited the peoples of Europe. It was an easy-going system. It did not call for any application of the new spirit of inquiry to the prevailing institutions in Church and State. It was not insisting upon any too rigid morality either in the clergy or in the laity. Nor, on the other hand, was it overzealous in pressing its own claims too far. There is a grim sense of humour in the attitude of the Church towards its own institutions, so long as their existence was not threatened and no diminution of revenue was in sight. All the system asked was to be let alone. The Church knew that many of its claims had come to be absurd. Nowhere was this so well understood as in Italy and above all at Rome. So frank a "heathen" as Leo X. was not likely to insist too eagerly upon ideas or practices which he knew to be mere superstitions of the vulgar--not likely, that is, to press these matters until they were attacked.

If, on the other hand, they should be attacked, would this papacy be thorough-going enough in its enlightenment and its indifference to let them go, or would it rally to their defence all the forces of reaction? That was the problem of the Reformation period. If one approaches it from the side of enlightenment, one is at once impressed with the vast opportunity opened to the papacy. It had already adjusted itself to so many changes, it had so often found ways of taking the sting out of ideas and movements which seemed to threaten its very life, that sanguine men, like Erasmus, might well feel encouraged to hope that it would once more rise to the occasion. The world of Europe was filled with friendly criticism of its forms and methods; but as yet there had been few voices raised against its existence.

Dante, in his treatise on a single government for the world (_de Monarchia_), still clings to the mediæval conception of a twin administration of Christendom, only with the religious side distinctly subordinated to the temporal. Even Wiclif and Hus had been led to defy the papacy only by the logic of events; hostility to a papal organisation of church life was not an essential part of their original programme. Even Marsiglio of Padua had reserved to the papacy a wide sphere of activity, limited only by constitutional rights of governments and peoples. The literature of the conciliar period, covering the first half of the fifteenth century, does not succeed in casting off the spell of the papal idea, but aims to check and control its dangers to the public welfare. A constitutional papacy was the ideal of that time, not a Church without a papacy. All these attacks the mediæval system had met with amazing success. It had dealt its blows sparingly, but with great effect. Where its enemies had been backed up by powerful interests, as was Wiclif in England, it had seemed to fail and had bided its time. Where it could itself combine with other interests against them, as against Hus at Constance, it had hit hard and with precision.

It may be said with some certainty that if the papacy of the second half of the fifteenth century had been inclined to meet criticism half-way, criticism would not have turned into hostility. As one looks over the field of European society and politics in the two generations before 1517 one fails to find anything that can be called an anti-Roman "party." By "party" we mean here a nucleus of organisation with a programme or "platform" of its own towards the accomplishment of which it bends its chief efforts. In that sense, there was no party in Christendom which aimed at the overthrow of the papal system.

On the other hand it might be said that there was no great public interest in Europe which was not more or less directly threatened by the papacy and likely, therefore, at any inopportune moment, by some slip in the papal policy or even by the mere insistence of the papacy upon some point it could not give up, to be turned from apparent friendliness to open opposition. First among these public interests was the principle of nationality. The papacy had, as we have seen, apparently adjusted itself to this opposition, but this adjustment was obviously unstable. How great a strain would it bear? To what lengths of concession could the papacy afford to go in recognising the right of kings to manage the affairs of their kingdoms without interference? Were there questions of religion, or of public morals so obviously beyond the sphere of temporal control, that any conceivable papacy must cling to the right of final judgment in them or go to the wall? When in the year 1341 the Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian, had claimed for himself the divine right to declare a certain princess divorced from an inconvenient husband, that he might marry her to his son and bring her dowry to increase the Bavarian estates, there was an almost universal cry of horror at this assault upon a sacred prerogative of the Church. How would it be now, two hundred years later, if a king, let us say of England, should find it convenient to divorce a wife and marry another for no reason but that he willed it so? Could the papacy afford to pay the price of acquiescence, or could it better afford to lose for ever the allegiance of England? That was the kind of question presented to the papacy from the side of the national states.

So again from the point of view of the advancing thought of the day;--how far could the papacy safely go in meeting this advance? Men were moving on step by step from one audacious thought to another, until it was beginning to seem as if there were no limit to the speculation of this awakened human spirit. The Church had grown great upon a system of thought in which the institution, the established order, the class, the tradition, had been everything, and the individual had been nothing. It had been a man's first duty, not to have ideas of his own, but to take those which were offered to him by the highest prevailing authority. So far all opposition to this method of thought had been effectually silenced. John Hus had declared that the essence of the Church lay in its being the assembly of believers acknowledging Christ alone as its head. Hus had been disposed of, and again the papacy had risen triumphant. The same men who had pressed most eagerly the condemnation of Hus were at that moment aiding his cause by putting forward a theory of church life which thrust the papacy into the background and would have brought into its place a legislature of national churches as the true expression of the will of Western Christendom. That opposition too had been overcome.

But now a more subtle development of individualism was beginning to make itself felt. The Church had thus far succeeded in keeping itself before the world as the one sole and sufficient medium of salvation for sinful man. It had developed a vast and imposing system of mediation between man and God by its priesthood, its ceremonies, its philosophy of morals, and its elaborately conducted methods of bookkeeping with the consciences of the faithful. Indeed, so elaborate had this soul-saving machinery become that the wear and tear of it threatened the durability of its parts. An immense proportion of its energy had to be devoted to keeping the system going. What now would happen if somehow it should be made clear to the Christian conscience that there was a shorter way to salvation, a more direct, a less expensive, and, more than all, a better-established way? How far would the Church dare to carry its policy of going half way toward such an idea as that?

The test upon this point came in the revival of all that group of notions which, for lack of a better term, we express by the word "Augustinianism." Setting aside all refinements of theology for the moment, the word Augustinian represents to us the conception of the individual human soul as a sinful thing, thrown out in all its nakedness and isolation upon an angry sea of retribution, from which nothing can save it but the arbitrary action of the grace of God. Here was individualism indeed! We have seen how the Church had got on with the æsthetic individualism of the Renaissance--with its sham heathenism, its theatrical exploiting of antiquity to justify a license which affronted all true Christian self-respect, and yet, after all, its readiness to conform itself to all existing forms of social and religious organisation. From such individualism as this the Church had little direct injury to fear. It laughed with it and at it and used it for its purposes. Poggio Bracciolini, the most foul-mouthed blackguard of the second generation of Italian Humanists, spent his life as papal secretary without fear and without reproach.

Strange collocation of ideas, that the same impulse which drove these unchecked scoffers into an æsthetic defiance of literary tradition should have forced Luther and Calvin into a death-struggle with the whole existing church order! The Church had tolerated the individualism of taste; how far could it tolerate the individualism of the soul? The one had declared that the salvation of the human mind was to be found by going back to the unfailing sources of culture in the Greek and Latin classics. The other was to declare that the only salvation of the soul was to be found by overleaping all the vast accumulation of forms and traditions of the past thousand years and going straight back to the early proclamations of the divine grace through faith in Christ alone.

* * * * *

While Erasmus was studying, writing, planning, and travelling, with Louvain as the centre of his manifold activities, the great assault was gathering its force in a quarter of the world from which it might least have been expected. The north of Germany lay almost entirely beyond the circle of vision of Erasmus and such as he. The Universities of Leipzig and Erfurt, the most important of the Saxon schools, had thus far contributed little to the advance of general culture. They were still mainly under the influence of the scholastic traditions, guided by such men as those who had been made the butts of the _Epistolæ obscurorum virorum_. The University of Wittenberg, founded in 1502 by the Elector Frederic of Saxony, was just in time to gain for its chairs some of the first-fruits of the revived classical spirit, which men like Reuchlin and Rudolf Agricola had imported into Germany from the Italian fountainhead. The call of Martin Luther in 1508 from the Augustinian cloister at Erfurt to a professorship of theology at Wittenberg, while it cannot be described as a demonstration in favour of the New Learning, brought a young man into active professional work who was already familiar with the new spirit of study and who was likely to apply it to his theological teaching, without being seduced by its æsthetic charm. The invitation of Philip Melanchthon four years later to teach Greek was a more pronounced declaration that Wittenberg was to look forward and not back in setting the tone of its instruction. Melanchthon was a promising youth of twenty-one, a relative and pupil of Reuchlin and recommended by him for this place. He was already well known as an accomplished Grecian, an amiable, but decided personality, destined to be through a lifetime of contention the balance-wheel of the Lutheran party.

It cannot be our purpose to rehearse here the familiar story of Luther's early career. Friends and enemies alike have done their utmost to set before us the engaging but often mysterious personality of the man. Our only interest can be to review very briefly such aspects of his development as may serve to illustrate the similarities and the differences between his course and that of Erasmus and thus prepare us to understand the connection of the latter with the reform movement of Luther. If our earlier judgments as to the youth of Erasmus are correct we shall have to believe that Luther's years of apprenticeship were far more truly years of hardship and struggle than were his. Poverty, stern discipline, and unsatisfied desire left their lifelong marks upon a physical constitution none too strong, but could not crush the inherent cheerfulness and courage which proved his dominant characteristics.

We seek in vain through the record of Luther's earlier years for indications of that stormy, passionate zeal for improvement in the conditions about him which almost any student of the later reform would suppose to be the moving impulse of his character. Conformity to the demands of his immediate surroundings is as marked a trait with him as were resistance and restlessness with Erasmus. He goes and does as he is bidden. He enters a monastery of his own free will and conforms with painful exactness to the requirements of the rule. Even long after he has begun to lead the fight against the limitations of the existing order, he continues to wear the dress and to live in the cloister of the local Augustinians. The impulse to the Lutheran reform cannot, therefore, be found in any restless impatience of personal limitation on Luther's part. It must be sought in some great, overpowering conviction which drove him out of the attitude of conformity into the attitude of resistance.

This overmastering impulse came in the form of that Augustinian proposition we were just now examining--the proposition that the salvation, or, better still, the justification, of a man's soul was to come, not through any institution, nor through the due performance of anything whatever, but through the direct act of the grace of God, and, furthermore, that the only condition of receiving such grace was an honest opening of the soul to its action,--or, in theological language, "faith." Luther was not a great "theologian," as that word was used, in reverence by some and in ridicule by others. He had not worked himself out into clearness by a scholastic process, and whenever he tried to defend himself by scholastic methods, he was almost sure to confuse himself in contradictions and exaggerations. His clearness of vision came rather by an indefinable process of revelation and self-realisation, and then it became his life-problem to interpret to others what had brought such abundant illumination and satisfaction to himself. The boldness of Luther was not that of a man defiant by nature, who enjoys the game of give and take, but rather that of a man who puts off the moment of his attack until he can do so no longer, and then lets himself go, driven from behind, as it were, by a will greater than his own and against which he is powerless.

With a nature and a method like this Erasmus could never have had much sympathy. Compare their two views of Italy. We have seen Erasmus seeking there the rewards of scholarship, cultivating the society of learned men, playing the rôle of the famous scholar himself, making himself acceptable to the powers that were, getting out of Italy what he could--then coming away and letting all the shafts of his biting satire play upon this society where he has been feeling himself at home. He could eat the bread and take the pay of Aldus, and then hold him up to the laughter of the world.

Luther went to Italy at almost the same time on an errand from the Saxon Augustinians to the general chapter at Rome. He travelled as a monk, stopping at the houses of his order along the way. At Rome he visited all the shrines of the saints, like the most pious of pilgrims. He was almost sorry, he says, that his parents were living, so many were the advantages offered to the souls of the departed at these altars of divine grace. He performed his commission, went back to his place, and continued for seven years longer to fulfil his duties as monk, priest, and teacher, without any outward show of hostility to the Roman system. Only in his preaching and writing, one can trace the steady advance of confidence in his guiding principle of "faith" as the one sufficient guarantee of a life "justified" or "adjusted" to the divine requirement. He did not seek the fight; he waited in his place until the battle sought him out and then he dared not refuse the challenge.

Compare again the animating principle of these two men. If it be true that faith alone is the sufficient basis of all justification before God, then it would seem to follow that the individual will has little to do with determining the fate of man either here or hereafter. Superficially viewed, this doctrine seems to place man within the circle of a kind of blind fatalism. Such reproaches have been heard ever since the days of Augustine, whenever this subject has been prominently before men's minds. "Has Christianity brought us out of the old fatalism of the Greeks only to plunge us into a new fatalism, as hard, but not as picturesque, as the old one?" was asked in Augustine's own time. Nor had the Augustinian party ever failed to draw more or less strictly the evident conclusion from its own premises. It had always insisted that the will of man was not morally free, but was enslaved by a certain principle of evil, which had entered into man with the "fall of Adam" and been transmitted from father to son ever since.

Now the Church had always regarded Augustine as one of its greatest ornaments. He was one of the "four Fathers" upon whom, as upon four pillars, rested its majestic structure. Yet in practice, the Church had never lived up to the doctrine of the enslaved will. When, in the ninth century, the Saxon Gottschalk, spiritual progenitor of the Saxon Luther, had turned his unpractised logic upon this subject and had worked out to a conclusion the doctrine of a double predestination, the Church, through its ablest representative, Hincmar of Rheims, had promptly flogged him and shut him up for life where he would do no harm. So far as the Church had ever formulated its views on the matter, it had been "Semi-Pelagian." It recognised in human justification both the grace of God and the will of man, but did not draw with absolute clearness a conclusion as to the preponderance of one over the other. In fact the Church had done something better than to speculate. It had acted. It had evolved a marvellous system of justifying agencies, administered by itself, and had said to its members, in practice if not in theory, "Do these things and you shall be saved." While this excellent machinery worked, there was obviously no occasion for any good Christian to worry about the conditions of justification, and in fact, from the ninth to the fifteenth century, the Augustinian doctrines are not once brought prominently before the world for discussion. It was only when men began once more to doubt whether the church method of doing specific things and getting certificates for them was, after all, the only way, or even the best way, to find one's adjustment with God, that this whole group of subjects began, once more, to demand their attention. The doctrine of the enslaved will, narrow and revolting though it may seem to the larger thought of our time, was the opening gate through which a way might be found into that very same largeness of view. The world learns slowly and the dim vision of to-day becomes the flooding glory of a newly risen to-morrow.

Where should we expect to find Erasmus, as we have been making acquaintance with him to the year 1518, on this great new question of human justification? Our answer must follow two main lines. First, as to the general notion of the freedom of the will, we may fairly conclude from all his moral teaching up to that time, that the idea of Luther in itself would be most repugnant to him. The whole tone of the Enchiridion, for example, is to emphasise the function of the individual conscience in determining action. The call to duty is imperative; the assumption is that man can do what he ought to do. The freedom of the will in human action is so completely assumed that there is no need of discussing it. The ultimate appeal is never to any outside power. If, on the one hand, Erasmus avoids all final reference to an ecclesiastical authority, so, on the other hand, he equally avoids reference to a theological "grace of God" which is to do our moral work for us. The same impression comes from a study of the Christian Prince. The prince is a "good prince," not because he is a special instrument in the hand of God, nor because he is a faithful servant of any church authority, but because he does his duty as a man, in the station to which he is called. He ought to do this thing or that simply because it is the right and the wise thing to do, tending most directly toward the welfare of his subjects and the interest of the prince himself. The Christian state is such because it tends toward a realisation of the teaching of Christ, not because it corresponds to any abstract ideal set for it by the church power or by any direct working of the divine agency.

Our second point of view is thus already suggested. In so far as the Lutheran position dealt with man as an individual being, responsible directly to God, without the need of any intervening human agency, in so far it could not fail to command the sympathy of whatever was most sound and most sincere in the thought of Erasmus. His moral appeal throughout is completely free from any really convincing reference to a highest church tribunal, whose decisions must be final. One can find plenty of passages in which he has, even before 1518, expressed his respect for the papal system; but it would be hard to think of any one of these as representing his really deepest convictions. Either they are purely conventional, having no bearing upon the issue of the Reformation, or they are evident "hedging," put in to guard their author against the suspicion of having gone too far on the way of criticism. It is always difficult to know which of his selves is the real self; but wherever in Erasmus' moral writing we seem to feel the ring of a sincere emotion, it is always when he is appealing to the essential manliness of man--never when he is making his apologies to the powers that be.

Again, it was plain, once for all, as early as 1518, that Erasmus had not in him the stuff out of which great leaders of men in critical times are made. No one would have acknowledged this more readily than he, and nothing could have been farther from the line of his ambition than such leadership. Even if we make large deductions from his account of the great positions he had declined, enough remains to make us quite sure that, if he had chosen, he might have held any one of many places, which, by their very importance, would have given him an effective leverage upon European affairs. Such influence lay within the field neither of his gifts nor of his desires. Such effect as he might have upon the course of events must come through the natural channel of his work as a scholar and a critic.

The difficulty of our problem is greatly increased by the almost hopeless complication of questions which entered into that one great demonstration we call the Reformation. Even at this distance of time it is impossible, without resorting to some rather large generalisation, to say in a single phrase what the issue of the Reformation was. Still less, of course, was such clear discrimination possible to one who stood, as Erasmus did, in the midst of these rapid and ever-shifting and often conflicting currents and was called upon to say just where his standing-ground was, or with which one of these currents he was willing to drift.

Luther nailed his Theses on Indulgences to the door of the Palace-Church at Wittenberg on the last day of October in the year 1517. When and where the news of this action reached Erasmus we do not know. It is impossible that it can have been more than a few weeks before he, in common with all intelligent persons, had read this first proclamation of a war that was to be to the death. The Theses attacked indulgences, but these were only the outward form under which the whole theory of a mechanical salvation was expressed. If the indulgence was wrong, not merely in practice, but in theory as well, then the whole church system, in so far as it was a soul-saving apparatus, was wrong too. Doubtless there was room for infinite refinements upon this simple deduction. The same thesis about indulgences had been put forth many times before. Men had come to the same conclusions by many different roads; but never yet had any one person travelled so many of these roads. In Luther there spoke the monk, who had tried faithfully the method of conformity; the priest, who had gone directly to the souls of men with the consolations of religious hope; the scholar, who had caught the gleam of that new light of reason which was changing the whole aspect of human thought; the patriot, who saw his fellow-countrymen victimised by a vast foreign oppression; and finally the man, who had worked through the awful problem of human sinfulness until he saw it clearly solved by reference to the common inheritance of humanity.

That is why Luther's appeal was heard. Everyone to whom it came found in it some echo of his own experience. From every part of Europe and from every human interest came almost immediately a response which showed that a voice had been heard for which men had long been waiting. The Theses were a temperate document. The tone of impatience, even of violence, that was to mark so much of Luther's later writing, was here as yet only suggested by a rare decision and certainty of utterance. Already Luther spoke as one who could not help it. At last the conflict had forced itself upon him, and for him, being the man he was, there was no alternative. The form of the Theses was that of a challenge to discussion. Luther put himself forward as a learner, who was prepared to change his view whenever a better one should appear. The replies, in so far as they were hostile, simply continued the discussion.

Probably there was no other man in Europe from whom a decisive word in his favour would have been so welcome to Luther as a word at this moment from Erasmus. Nor, on the other hand, was there a champion whom the existing system would more gladly have seen on its side. The word was not spoken, but neither did Erasmus array himself as yet frankly in opposition to Luther. Indeed we have no reason to believe that the issue in all its magnitude was clearly present to his thought.

Some things he saw only too clearly. His clever, analytical mind perceived that usages and forms might in themselves be innocent or even helpful, while the wrong use of them was harmful in the extreme. So his instinct was in every case to say: Let us amend the wrong use of these things, but let us not disturb the innocent and helpful practice itself. Whatever subject he touched called out at once this overfine discriminating power. He drew a picture of the thing he wanted to express and believed himself to be heightening the effect of this picture when he refined upon it until its outlines became obscured and the very effect he had aimed at was defeated. The art of fine distinctions was an admirable one. The question of the hour, however, was not to be solved in that way. The time had come when men were going down deep below these refinements and were about to ask the fatal question: whether forms and systems which could not bear the strain of daily use by plain human nature without gross abuses, were not better reformed out of existence once for all. Erasmus said, "Be good and all these evils will vanish." Quite true, but if all men were good there would be no need of institutions at all. The question was, whether the experiment had not been tried long enough, and that was the issue which Erasmus seems not to have grasped.

For the moment the discussion turned on the question of indulgences. On this subject Erasmus had made no utterance which could be understood as committing him on the theory as a whole. In the Praise of Folly he had ridiculed the grosser absurdities of the practice, especially the counting up of the days and years of redemption from Purgatory, as if salvation were a thing of the multiplication-table. The teaching of the Enchiridion was hopelessly against any such conception of moral regeneration. Anyone who had read Erasmus could not have a moment's doubt that the system of indulgences, as it was practised throughout Europe, must have been repulsive to him in the extreme. The idea that Erasmus could ever have invested a penny in such traffic for the advantage of his own soul or that of anyone dear to him, was grotesquely absurd. Moreover the circumstances of that special sale of indulgences in Germany which called out the wrath of Luther were such as must have seemed equally outrageous to Erasmus. The barefaced openness with which the Prince Elector of Mainz had lent himself to the papal exaction, on condition that half the plunder should go into his own pocket to pay for the _pallium_ which the papacy itself had just granted him, brought out into clearest relief the purely mercantile nature of the whole transaction. It required all the hair-splitting of all the schools to carry a man through the stages of that bargain and leave him at last with any tenderness whatever for the system that made it possible. Yet this was precisely the feat which Erasmus was apparently to perform.

We gain a glimpse at the working of his mind on this subject in the letter to Volzius, called forth by criticism of the Enchiridion, and dated in August, 1518[121]:

[121] iii.¹, 343-E.

"If anyone finds fault with the preposterous opinion of the
vulgar, which gives to the highest virtues the lowest place and
_vice versa_ and is specially shocked by unimportant evils and
the reverse, then one is straightway called to account as if
one favoured those evils which seem to him less than some other
evil; or as if he were condemning certain good actions because
he thinks others are even better. So if one teaches that it is
safer to trust in good deeds than in the papal pardons, he is
not condemning those pardons, but is giving the preference to
what is more certainly in accord with the teaching of Christ.
So also, if one thinks that they act more wisely who stay at
home and look after their wives and children, than they who go
running about to Rome or Jerusalem or Compostella, and that
the money wasted in long and dangerous journeys were much more
piously spent upon the worthy and honest poor, one is not
condemning the pious impulse of those persons, but is only
preferring what comes nearer to true piety. In truth it is not
a fault of our times alone to attack certain evils as if they
were the only ones, while we smooth over, as if they were not
evils at all, others far worse than those we are abusing."

One feels here an allusion to that overemphasis on outward organisation which was to be Erasmus' great objection to the German reform. Instead of this he would have the true value of the institution so clearly brought out that it would counteract all tendency to abuse. This letter was one of the last pieces of Erasmus' writing at Basel before the long illness of which he speaks in the letter about his journey to Louvain. He had spent the year 1518 chiefly at Basel in tireless industry. He arrived at Louvain only, as we have seen, to break down again. It was 1519 before we find him drawn directly into the Lutheran controversy.

The letter to Volzius just quoted was printed as a preface to a new edition of the Enchiridion in 1518. The first step in the correspondence with Luther was taken by Luther himself in March, 1519, and seems to have been suggested by the very passage we have here made use of to show Erasmus' feeling about indulgences. Luther's tone in this first letter is eminently characteristic of his attitude during these early years of his public activity. It is modest and self-depreciating to a degree. Words fail him to express his admiration for the great scholar. It is really monstrous that they should not know each other, when he has so long been worshipping in silence.[122]

[122] i., 423-D.

"Who is there whose inmost being is not filled by Erasmus?
Who is not being taught by Erasmus? In whom does not Erasmus
reign?--I mean, of course, among those who have a true love of
letters. For I am glad enough and I reckon it among the gifts of
Christ, that there are many who do not approve of you. By this
test I discern the gifts of a loving from those of an angry God,
and I congratulate you that while you are most acceptable to all
good men, you are equally disliked by those who would like to be
thought the only great ones and the only ones to be accepted.
But here am I, clumsy fellow, approaching you thus familiarly
with unwashed hands and without formal phrases of reverence and
honour, as one unknown person might address another. I beg you
by your kind nature, lay this to the account of my affection
or my inexperience. In truth, I whose life has been passed
among the schoolmen, have not so much as learned how to address
a truly learned man by letter. Otherwise, how I would have
wearied you already with epistles! I would not have suffered
you alone to speak to me all this time in my study. Now, since
I have learned from Fabricius Capito that my name is known to
you through my trifles about indulgences and learned also from
your most recent preface to the Enchiridion, that my notions
have not only been seen, but have also been accepted by you, I
am compelled to acknowledge, even though in barbarous style,
your noble spirit, which enriches me and all men.... And so, my
dear and amiable Erasmus, if you shall see fit, recognise this
your younger brother in Christ, indeed a most devoted admirer of
yours, but worthy, in his ignorance, only to be buried in his
corner and to be unknown to the same sky and sun with you."

The letter closes with an affectionate eulogy of Philip Melanchthon as the indispensable companion of his studies.

There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Luther's attitude at this critical moment. It was quite true that Erasmus was far beyond him in scholarly attainment and reputation. It was true also that the plain meaning of Erasmus' reference to indulgences in the preface to the Enchiridion was directly in accord with Luther's own position in the Theses. If he could be made now, in some more decided manner, to commit himself to Luther's cause, it would be a great point gained for reform.

Erasmus gave himself two months before answering these first advances of Luther. His reply is what we might, from our previous knowledge, have predicted. The letter appeals to him strongly[123]:

[123] iii.¹, 444-D

"Beloved brother in Christ, your letter was most acceptable, at
once showing the subtilty of your genius and breathing the very
spirit of Christ."

Then his own personality comes in and he is completely absorbed in the effect of Luther's action upon himself.

"I have no words to tell you what an excitement your books have
raised here. Up to the present moment the false suspicion cannot
be torn from the minds of these creatures that your works have
been written by my assistance and that I am the standard-bearer
of this 'faction' as they call it. Some think that a handle is
given them for attacking sound learning, toward which they have
a deadly hatred as an offence against Her Theological Majesty,
for whom they care vastly more than they do for Christ,--and
also for quashing me, whom they fancy to be of some avail in
encouraging learning.

"The whole affair is carried on with shoutings, with insolent
cunning, with slander and trickery, so that if I had not seen
it--nay, even felt it myself, I would never have believed, on
any authority, that theologians could be so insane. You might
suppose it was a regular plague; and yet the poison of this evil
began with a few and crept into the many, so that now a great
part of this much frequented university is infected with this
poisonous disease. I have sworn that you were totally unknown
to me, that I had not yet read your books, and therefore that
I neither approved nor disapproved anything in them. I only
advised them not to keep bawling out so hatefully to the people
about your books, which they had not yet read, but to await the
judgment of those whose opinion ought to have most weight. I
begged them to consider whether it was well to abuse before a
promiscuous crowd things which ought more properly to be refuted
in books or discussed by learned men, especially as there was
but one opinion as to the excellence of the author's life. But
nothing did any good;--so furious are they in their underhanded
and scandalous discussions."

He, Erasmus, becomes at once the central point in his own field of vision. Luther has friends in England, even some in Louvain.

"But I keep myself, so far as I can, _integrum_ [shall we say
'uncompromised'?] in order that I may the better serve the
reviving cause of letters; and I think a well-mannered reserve
will accomplish more than violence, etc. We ought to keep an
even temper, lest it be spoiled by anger, hatred, or vainglory;
for in the very midst of a zeal for religion these things are
apt to be lying in wait for us. I am not urging you to do all
this, but just to keep on as you are doing. I have glanced over
(_degustavi_) your commentaries on the Psalms; they appeal to me
greatly and I hope they will be of great value."

We have omitted a string of commonplaces about moderation and gentleness, which must have helped to make this letter rather cold comfort to Luther. If it meant anything to him, it meant that Erasmus really agreed with his views on indulgences and the state of the Church in general, but was already dreading the effect of putting these views boldly and clearly before the world. What Luther wanted in the spring of 1519 was not pious exhortation to keep his temper, but a grip of the hand and a frank word of approval. Whether Erasmus was going to have a bad time with the men of darkness at Louvain could not interest him. The question was: would Erasmus stand by him,--yes or no? and so far the answer was not encouraging. To one who knew the kind of language Erasmus was wont to apply to his opponents, it must have seemed grotesquely out of place for him to exhort Luther to gentleness of speech.

The dread of being charged with the authorship of Luther's works and of others similar in their purpose, seems to have been the one thing uppermost in the mind of Erasmus during these years 1518 and 1519. His correspondence is full of it. He took pains, in a fashion which he had never before shown, to set himself right with all the great persons with whom he had any connection.

The earliest in the group of apologetic letters brought out by the charge that Luther was only expressing Erasmus' ideas in somewhat bolder form is one written to Cardinal Wolsey in May, 1518.[124] Here begin the phrases afterwards to become so familiar:

[124] This is Leclerc's date. Stichart prefers Dec. 18, 1517.

"Luther is as unknown to me as he is to anyone, nor have I
had leisure to turn over his books except here and there
a page;--not that I shrank from the work, but that other
occupations left me no time for it. And yet certain persons,
as I hear, are saying that I have been helping him. If he
has written well I deserve no praise; if otherwise I merit
no blame--since in all his writings not so much as one jot
is mine, and anyone can prove this who wishes to investigate
it. The man's way of life is approved by all, and this is no
slight argument in his favour, that his character is so sound
that not even enemies can find anything to criticise. But even
if I had ever so much time for reading him I cannot take upon
myself to pronounce upon the writings of so great a man, even
though nowadays boys are everywhere, with the greatest boldness,
declaring this to be false and that to be heretical. At one time
indeed I was a little hard upon Luther, fearing that some cause
for enmity against sound learning might be given, and desiring
not to see that cause burdened any further. For I could not
help seeing how much enmity would be aroused if things were
to be broken up from which a rich harvest was being reaped by
priests and monks.

"There appeared first quite a number of propositions about papal
indulgences; then one and another pamphlet about confession and
penance. When I heard that certain persons were eager to publish
these I seriously advised against it, lest they should be
adding to the enmity against learning. There will be witnesses
of this, even men who wish well to Luther. Finally there came
a swarm of pamphlets; no one saw me reading them; no one heard
me praising them or not praising them. For I am not so rash as
to approve what I have not read, nor such a trickster as to
condemn what I know nothing about,--though this is nowadays a
regular practice of those who ought to know better. Germany has
some young men who give great promise of learning and eloquence,
through whose work I predict that she may some day have cause to
boast as England is now boasting with the best of reasons. Of
these no one is personally known to me except Eobanus, Hutten,
and Beatus. These men are fighting with every form of weapon
against the enemies of the languages and of sound learning,
which all good men are favouring. I should admit myself that
their freedom of speech was intolerable, did I not know in
what shameful fashion they are annoyed both in public and in
private. Their opponents allow themselves in public preaching,
in schools, in banquets, to declaim anything they please in the
most hateful, nay, in the most treasonable manner, before the
ignorant multitude, yet think it an unbearable thing if one of
these scholars dares to comment. Why! the very bees have stings
to strike with when they are hurt and flies have teeth to defend
themselves if they are attacked. Whence comes this new race of
gods? They make 'heretics' of whom they will, but move heaven
and earth if anyone calls them slanderers....

"I am in favour of these scholars in this sense: that I look
rather to their virtues than to their vices. And when one
considers how soaked in vice were those men who in Italy
and France gave the first impulse to the revival of ancient
learning, one cannot help favouring these men of ours whose
characters are such that their theological censors would do well
to imitate them rather than abuse them.