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seem to have doubted him, and some, in England, suspected that Erasmus's hand and spirit were to be detected in the reply that Luther made to King Henry's book against him. Bishop Tunstall confesses that he is relieved to hear by the letter Erasmus had addressed to the king and the legate that he had had nothing to do with this violent composition, and, moreover, that he was opposed to Lutheran principles. In his letter on this subject, the bishop laments the rapid spread of these dangerous opinions which threaten disturbances everywhere. When the sacred ceremonies of the Church and all pious customs are attacked as they are, he says, civil tumults are sure to follow. After Luther's book De abroganda Missa, the Reformer will quickly go further, and so Tunstall begs and beseeches Erasmus, by "Christ's Passion and glory" and "by the reward" he expects; "yea, and the Church itself prays and desires you," he adds, "to engage in combat with this hydra."1

At length, urged by so many of his best friends, Erasmus took up his pen against Luther and produced his book De libero Arbitrio, to which Luther, a past master in invective, replied in his contemptuous De servo Arbitrio, Erasmus rejoining in the Hyperaspistes. Sir Thomas More wrote that this last book delighted him, and urged Erasmus to further attacks. "I cannot say how foolish and inflated I think Luther's letter to you," he writes. "He knows well how the wretched glosses into which he has darkened Scripture turn to ice at your touch. They were, it is true, cold enough already.""

Erasmus's volume on Free-will drew down on him, as might be expected, the anger of the advanced Lutherans. Ulrich von Hutten, formerly a brilliant follower of Erasmus and Reuchlin in their attempts to secure a revival of letters, was now the leader of the most reckless and forward of the young German Lutherans, who assisted the Reformer by

1 Ep. 656.

2 Ep. 334 (second series).

their violence and their readiness to promote any and all of his doctrinal changes by stirring up civil dissensions. Von Hutten endeavoured to throw discredit upon Erasmus by a brilliant and sarcastic attack upon it. In 1523, Erasmus published what he called the Spongia, or reply to the assertions of von Hutten on his honour and character. The tract is really an apology or explanation of his own position as regards the Lutherans, and an assertion of his complete loyalty to the Church. The book was in Froben's hands for press in June, 1523, but before it could appear in September von Hutten had died. Erasmus, however, determined to publish the work on account of the gravity of the issues. It is necessary, if we would understand Erasmus's position fully, to refer to this work at some considerable length. After complaining most bitterly that many people had tried to defame him to the Pope and to his English friends, and to make him a Lutheran whether he would or no; and after defending his attitude towards Reuchlin as consistent throughout, he meets directly von Hutten's assertion that he had condemned the whole Dominican body. "I have never," he says, "been ill disposed to that Order. I have never been so foolish as to wish ill to any Order. If it were necessary to hate all Dominicans because, in the Order, there were some bad members, on the same ground it would be needful to detest all Orders, since in every one there are many black sheep." On the same principle Christianity itself would be worthy of hatred." The fact really is that the Dominicans have many members who are friendly to Erasmus, and who are favourable to learning in general, and Scripture study and criticism in particular.

In the same way, von Hutten had mistaken Erasmus's whole attitude towards the Roman Church. He had charged him with being inconsistent, in now praising,

1 Spongia (Basle, Froben, 1523), c. 5.

now blaming, the authorities. Erasmus characterises this as the height of impudence. "Who," he asks, "has ever approved of the vices of the Roman authorities? But, on the other hand, who has ever condemned the Roman Church? "

Continuing, he declares that he has never been the occasion of discord or tumult in any way, and appeals with confidence to his numerous letters and works as sufficient evidence of his love of peace. "I love liberty," he writes; "I neither can aid, nor desire to aid, any faction." Already many confess that they were wrong in taking a part; and he sees many, who had thrown in their lot with Luther, now drawing back, and regretting that they had ever given any countenance to him.1 His (Erasmus's) sole object has been to promote good letters, and to restore Theology to its simple and true basis, the Holy Scripture. This he will endeavour to do as long as he has life. "Luther," he says, "I hold to be a man liable to err, and one who has erred. Luther, with the rest of his followers, will pass away; Christ alone remains for ever."

In more than one place of this Spongia, Erasmus complains bitterly that what he had said in joke, and as mere pleasantry at the table, had been taken seriously. "What is said over a glass of wine," he writes, "ought not to be remembered and written down as a serious statement of belief. Often at a feast, for example, we have transferred the worldly sovereignty to Pope Julius, and made Maximilian, the emperor, into the supreme Pontiff. Thus, too, we have married monasteries of monks to convents of nuns; we have sent armies of them against the Turks, and colonised new islands with them. In a word, we turn the universe topsy-turvy. But, such whims are never meant to be taken seriously, as our own true convictions."

'Ibid., sig. d. 4.

Von Hutten had complained that Erasmus had spoken harshly about Luther, and hinted that he was really actuated by a spirit of envy, on seeing Luther's books more read than his own. Erasmus denies that he has ever called Luther by any harsh names, and particularly that he has ever called him "heretic." He admits, however, that he had frequently spoken of the movement as a "tragedy," and he points to the public discords and tumults then distracting Germany as the best justification of this verdict.1

Von Hutten having said that children were being taught by their nurses to lisp the name Luther, Erasmus declares that he cannot imagine whose children these can be; for, he says, "I daily see how many influential, learned, grave, and good men have come to curse his very name."

The most interesting portion, however, of the Spongia is that in which, at considerable length, Erasmus explains his real attitude to Rome and the Pope. "Not even about the Roman See," he says, "will I admit that I have ever spoken inconsistently. I have never approved of its tyranny, rapacity, and other vices about which of old common complaints were heard from good men. Neither do I sweepingly condemn Indulgences,' though I have always disliked any barefaced traffic in them. What I think about ceremonies, many places in my works plainly show What it may mean 'to reduce the Pope to order' I do not rightly understand. First, I think it must be allowed that Rome is a Church, for no number of evils can make it cease to be a Church, otherwise we should have no Churches whatever. Moreover, I hold it

to be an orthodox Church; and this Church it must be admitted, has a Bishop. Let him be allowed also to be Metropolitan, seeing there are very many archbishops in countries where there has been no apostle, and Rome, without controversy, had certainly SS. Peter and Paul,

1 Ibid., sig. e. 2.

the two chief apostles.

Then how is it absurd that among Metropolitans the chief place be granted to the Roman Pontiff ?"1

As to the rest, Erasmus had never, he declares, defended the excessive powers which for many years the popes have usurped, and, like all men, he wishes for a thorough apostolic man for Pope. For his part, if the Pope were not above all things else an apostle, he would have him deposed as well as any other bishop, who did not fulfil the office of his state. For many years, no doubt, the chief evils of the world have come from Rome, but now, as he believes, the world has a Pope who will try at all costs to purify the See and Curia of Rome. This, however, Erasmus fancies is not quite what von Hutten desires. He would declare war against the Pope and his adherents, even were the Pope a good Pope, and his followers good Christians. War is what von Hutten wants, and he cares not whether it brings destruction to cities and peoples and countries.

Erasmus admits that he knows many people who are ready to go some way in the Lutheran direction; but who would strongly object to the overthrow of papal authority. Many would rather feel that they have a father than a tyrant: who would like to see the tables of the moneychangers in the temple overthrown, and the barefaced

1Ibid., sig. e. 2. The supreme authority of the Pope is asserted by Erasmus in numberless places in his works. For example, in the tract Pacis Querimonia, after saying that he cannot understand how Christians, who understand Christ's teaching and say their Pater noster with intelligence, can always be at strife, he proceeds: "The authority of the Roman Pontiff is supreme. But when peoples and princes wage impious wars, and that for years, where then is the authority of the Pontiffs, where then is the power next to Christ's power?" &c. (Opera, tom. iv. p. 635). So too in his Precatio pro Pace Ecclesiæ, after praying that God would turn the eyes of His mercy upon the Church, over which "Peter was made Supreme Pastor," he declares that there but "one Church, out of which there is no salvation."

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