"in so many letters, so many books, and by so many proofs, I am continually declaring that I am unwilling to be involved with either party. I give many reasons for this determination, but have not put forth all of them. And in this matter my conscience makes no charge against me before Christ my judge. In the midst of such confusion and danger to my reputation and my life I have so moderated my judgments as neither to be the author of any disturbance nor to help any cause which I do not approve. If Hutten is enraged because I do not support Luther as he does, I protested three years ago in an appendix added to my Familiar Colloquies at Louvain, that I was totally a stranger to that faction and always would be. I am not only keeping outside of it myself, but I am urging as many friends as I can to do the same, and I will never cease to do so. I mean by 'faction' the zeal of a mind sworn as it were to everything that Luther has written or is writing or ever will write. This kind of a sentiment often imposes upon good men; but I have openly announced to all my friends that if they cannot love me except as a Lutheran they may have whatever feeling they like about me. I am a lover of liberty. I will not and I cannot serve a party."
Here once more Erasmus saves himself by a definition. If to be a Lutheran were to swear to every word of Luther's, then, of course, no man in his senses would confess to the party name. Erasmus knew as well as anyone that parties for action were never formed by any such test. Men joined a party because they were in general sympathy with others and believed that the time for common action had come. This common action was the thing he could not bear to think of. To him it meant confusiones, tumultus, tragœdias, and all the other horrors of open conflict. We leave the Hutten episode, closed as it was by the untimely death of the brilliant, reckless genius who had brought it on, with the feeling that Hutten's charge was substantially true. Erasmus, with all the best part of him, was fighting the Lutheran battle and knew he was doing it. He recoiled before the fear of violence and then had to justify himself.
It would be interesting to know how far the definition of the papacy as a metropolitan see among others represented a real opinion of Erasmus. Probably it was a rhetorical conclusion; but it can hardly have made the Spongia a welcome visitor at Rome, and it is not surprising that this passage was expurgated by the Roman censorship.
An incident of the year 1524 well illustrates the temper of Erasmus at the time and also the decline in regard for him on the Lutheran side. A certain Scotch printer at Strassburg had published some writing of Hutten against Erasmus, probably the Expostulatio, with offensive illustrations, and in a second edition had added an invective by another author, in which "whatever one blackguard could say of another" was said of Erasmus. What touched him especially was that he was called a traitor to the Gospel, and charged with having been hired for money to fight against it, and moreover was accused of being ready to be pulled in any direction by the chance of a crumb of bread. Erasmus wrote two very angry letters[150] to the magistrates of Strassburg asking them to punish the printer, and defending himself in his usual fashion from these charges.
Evidently nothing was done about it, for some time later Erasmus wrote to Caspar Hedio, one of the Lutheran preachers at Strassburg,[151] complaining of this neglect. His suggestions about the way to treat an offending printer are amusing.
"You say this Scotchman has a wife and little children. Would that be thought an excuse if he should break open my money-chest and steal my gold? I should say not; and yet he has done a thing far worse than that. Or perhaps you think I care less for my reputation than for my money. If he can't feed his children, let him go a-begging. 'That would be a shame,' you say. Well, aren't such actions as this a shame? Let him prostitute his wife and snore away with watchful nose over his cups. 'Horrible,' you say. And yet what he has done is more horrible still. There is no law to punish with death a man who prostitutes his wife; but everyone approves capital punishment for those who publish slanderous writings."
CHAPTER X
DOCTRINAL OPPOSITION TO THE REFORMATION—FREEDOM OF THE WILL—THE EUCHARIST—THE "SPIRIT"
1523-1527
There can be no doubt that Erasmus was urged from many sides to write something decisive against the Lutheran party. He held back as long as he could, partly, we may be sure, from real sympathy with the chief purpose of the reform and partly from a dread of committing himself to, he knew not precisely what. To estimate his position aright we must bear in mind that the real meaning of the reform party was developing year by year, taking on ever new aspects as one interest after another came to be connected with the original kernel of opposition. So far as outward things were concerned Erasmus was barred from many lines of attack by his own damning record. In these matters he could only indulge in vague exhortations to moderation and in voluminous, but not very convincing, apologies.