least with the more violent of the Lutheran party. Erasmus, in more than one passage of his letters, deplores the loose morals, as well as the unruly conduct, of many who called themselves Lutherans. All revolutions, especially religious revolutions, stir up the dregs of society; and most high-minded and dauntless Reformers, who find it necessary to break or loosen the bonds of existing authority, must look to bear the blame of men who seek freedom only to be free from all control

Who licence mean when they cry liberty.

Of a far higher cast and rank than such men, but of all the disciples of Luther the one in some respects most uncongenial to Erasmus, was Ulric Hutten. Of Hutten's literary labours, his free, bold, idiomatic Latinity; his powers of declamation, eloquence, satire; his large share in the famous Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum '4 (now, thanks to Sir W. Hamilton and to Dr. Strauss, ascertained with sufficient accuracy), no one was more inclined to judge favourably, or had expressed more freely that admiring judgement, than Erasmus. He had corresponded with him on friendly terms. But Hutten's morals certainly were not blameless. He was a turbulent, as well as a dauntless man-restless, reckless, ever in the van or on the forlorn hope of reform; daring what no one else would dare, enduring what few would endure, provoking, defying hostility, wielding his terrible weapon of satire without scruple or remorse, and ready, and indeed notoriously engaged, in wielding other not bloodless weapons. The last that was heard of him had been in one of what we fear must be called the robber-bands of Franz Sickengen. Already Ulric Hutten had taken upon himself the office of compelling Erasmus to take the Lutheran side. In a letter written (in 1520), under the guise of the warmest friendship, he had treated him as an apostate from

Erasmus is said to have owed his life to this publication. He laughed so violently while reading the letters, as to break a dangerous imposthume. He, however, not only disclaimed, but expressed, strong disapprobation of the tone and temper of the book.

the common cause." In the affair of Reuchlin, Erasmus, in Hutten's judgement (a judgement which he cared not to conceal), acted timidly and basely. He had at first highly lauded the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum,' afterwards treacherously condemned them. He had endeavoured to persuade the adversaries of Luther that the Reformation was a business in which he (Erasmus) had no concern. In a second letter, Hutten had endeavoured to work on the fears of Erasmus. He urged upon his adorable friend' that 'he could not be safe, since Luther's books had been burned: will they who have condemned Luther, spare you? Fly, fly and preserve yourself for us! Fly while you can, most excellent Erasmus, lest some calamity, which I shudder to think of, overtake you. At Louvain, at Cologne, you are equally in peril.' He suggests to Erasmus to take refuge in Basil.6 Erasmus did retire to Basil, but retired to place himself in connection with his printer. Two years after, Ulric Hutten, in wretched health, in utter destitution, almost an outlaw, hunted down, it might seem, as one of Franz Sickengen's disbanded soldiers, who could find no refuge in Germany, appeared in Basil. The intercourse between Hutten and Erasmus took place, unfortunately, through the busy and meddling, if not treacherous, Eppendorf. This man, by some said to have been of high birth, was studying theology at Basil, at the cost of Duke George of Saxony, the determined enemy of Lutheranism. The unpleasant quarrel which afterwards took place between Eppendorf and Erasmus, in which Eppendorf tried to extort money from Erasmus on account of an imprudent and ungenerous letter of Erasmus to the disadvantage of Eppendorf, gives but a mean opinion of this man. On the instant of his arrival, Hutten sent Eppendorf to Erasmus, it might seem expecting to be received with open arms, if not taken under his hospitable roof. But Erasmus was by no means disposed to commit himself with so unwelcome a guest, who was

* This letter, recently published in two theological journals in Germany, we know only as cited by Dr. Strauss; it is addressed Des. Erasmo Rot. Theologo, amico summo.'

• Opera Hutteni, Munch. 4, 49 53.

still suffering under a loathsome malady; or to make his house the centre, in which Hutten would gather round him all the most turbulent and desperate of the Lutherans. He shrunk from the burthen of maintaining him. Hutten, if we are to believe Erasmus, was not scrupulous in money matters, ready to borrow, but unable to pay. Erasmus repelled his advances with cold civility, but there is a doubt whether even his civil messages reached Hutten. There were negotiations, no doubt insincere on both sides. One could not bear the heat of a stove, the other could not bear a chill room without one. In short, they did not meet. The indefatigable Hutten employed his time at Basil, sick and broken down as he was, in his wonted way, in writing two fierce pamphlets; one against the Elector Palatine, one against a certain physician, who probably had been guilty of not curing him, to distract his mind, as Eppendorf said, from his sufferings. After two months Hutten received cold but peremptory orders from the magistrates to quit Basil. He retired to Mulhausen, to brood over the coolness and neglect of one from whom a man of calmer mind would hardly have expected more than coolness and neglect. A letter from Erasmus to Laurentius, Dean of St. Donatian at Bruges, fell in his way. In this letter Erasmus endeavoured still to maintain his stately neutrality, disclaimed all connection with Luther, did honour to Luther's merits, to the truth of much of his censures, and to his services to true religion, but reproved his vehemence and violence; and at the same time he protested against being enrolled among the adversaries of reform. This letter contained a hasty, and not quite accurate account of Hutten's visit to Basil. The busy Eppendorf rode to and fro between Basil and Mulhausen, and was not the mediator to conciliate men irreconcilably opposed in views and temper. The conclusion, the melancholy conclusion, was the 'Expostulation' of Hutten, in which in fury of invective, in bitterness of satire, in the mastery of vituperative Latin,

The account in Dr. Strauss's Life of Hutten is on the whole fair and candid.

Hutten outdid himself: only, perhaps, to be outdone in all these qualities by the 'Sponge' of Erasmus. Luther himself stood aghast, and expressed his grave and sober condemnation of both.

This unseemly altercation was not likely to maintain Erasmus in his dignified position of neutrality; it rendered his mediation next to impossible, if it had ever been possible to stem or to quiet two such furious conflicting currents. But worse trials followed; worse times came darkening over the man of books, the man of peace. The Peasant War broke out, desolating Southern Germany with atrocities, only surpassed, and far surpassed, by the atrocities perpetrated in their suppression.9 The Peasant insurrections were not religious wars; they were but the last, the most terrible in a long succession of such insurrections, to which the down-trodden cultivators of the soil had, from time to time, been goaded by the intolerable oppressions of their feudal lords. Luther denounced them with all his vehement energy. Luther held, according to his views of Scripture, the tenet of absolute submission to the higher powers in all temporal concerns. Some of the most abject of the English clergy under the Stuarts might have found quotations from the writings of Luther, to justify the extremest doctrines of passive obedience. Still, with the desperate struggles for social freedom were now unavoidably mingled aspirations after religious freedom. Among the articles exhibited by the insurgents was a demand for the free choice of their religious pastors. Some of the Reformed Clergy were among the fautors, some perhaps more deeply concerned in the revolt; many more were the victims of the blind, savage, indiscriminating massacre which crushed the rebellion. How to the quiet Erasmus might seem to be accomplished his gloomy and fearful

He writes in a lighter tone, 'Equidem Huttenum nollem expostulasse, multo minùs Erasmum extersisse.'-Epist. ad Hausman; De Wette, ii. 411.

9

A.D. 1523. In one of the letters of Erasmus it is said that 100,000 human beings had perished in these wars. See Epist. 803. See also Luther's letters; De Wette, iii. 22.

1 See Sartorius. Bauern Krieg, Berlin, 1795.

forebodings, that the tenets of Luther, breaking loose from authority, must lead to civil tumults! The Peasant wars had not ended, or hardly ended, when the Anabaptists, the first Anabaptists, arose, threw off at once all civil and religious obedience, with a fanaticism which had all the excesses, the follies, the cruelties, the tyranny of popular insurrection, without any of the grandeur, the noble self-sacrifice, the patriotic heroism of a strife for freedom. The voice of Luther was heard louder and louder, protesting, denouncing the monstrous wickedness, the monstrous impiety, the monstrous madness of these wild zealots; he repudiated them in the name of Christian faith and Christian morals, and called on all rulers and magistrates to put down with the severest measures, as they did without remorse, those common enemies of Christ and of mankind. Still these frantic excesses, notwithstanding this just and iterated disclaimer, could not but have some baneful effect on the progress of religious freedom; they affrighted the frightened, raised a howl of triumph from the extreme bigots, and, on those who, like Erasmus, loved peace above all things, seemed to enforce the wisdom of their cautious and prophetic timidity.

During all this time every influence, every kind of persuasion, was used to induce Erasmus to take the part of the established order of things-flatteries, promises, splendid offers, gifts; prelates, princes, kings, the Pope himself condescended to urge, to excite, almost to implore. Would the most learned man in Christendom stand aloof in sullen dignity? Would he whose voice alone could allay the tumult, maintain a cold and suspicious silence? Would he who had received such homage, such favours, such presents, persist in ungrateful disregard for the cause of order? Would the lover of peace do nothing to promote peace? His silence would be more than suspicious; it would justify the worst charges that could be made against him; irrefragably prove his latent heresies, and show the just sagacity of his most violent adversaries, according to

2 The great outburst of Anabaptism under John of Leyden was later, 1529.