[675] See above, p. 27 ff.
[676] “Werke,” Weim. ed., 7, p. 39; Erl. ed., 27, p. 199. Cp. Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 358 ff.
[677] See below, p. 288, the Sermon in 1531.
[678] To Johann Lang, April 12, 1522, “Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 331.
[679] Köstlin-Kawerau, 1, p. 657.
[680] Cp. Luther to Kaspar Borner, Professor at Leipzig, May 28, 1522, “Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 375.
[681] N. Paulus points out in his article “Georg Agricola” (“Histor-polit. Blätter,” 136, 1905, p. 793 ff.), that this scholar had never been one of Luther’s followers, and was particularly repelled by his views on the absence of free-will, which he opposed as early as 1522.
[682] “Luthers Briefwechsel,” 3, p. 377, n. 6, from Weller’s “Altes aus allen Teilen der Gesch.,” 1, 1765, p. 18.
[683] We may allude, for instance, to the beautiful words which, strange to say, have been described by certain Protestants as a moralistic explaining away of the true “evangelical comprehension of the person of Christ and His work”: “Ut certiore cursu queas ad felicitatem contendere, haec tibi quarta sit regula, ut totius vitae tuae Christum velut unicum scopum præfigas, ad quem unum omnia studia, omnes conatus, omne otium ac negotium conferas. Christum vero esse puta non vocem inanem, sed nihil aliud quam charitatem, simplicitatem, patientiam, puritatem, breviter, quidquid ille docuit” (“Enchiridion,” Basil., 1519, p. 93). G. Kawerau quotes from the correspondence of Justus Jonas which he edited, 1, p. 31, the words of Eobanus Hessus (1519) on the “Enchiridion”: “Plane divinum opus,” and the following utterance of Ulrich Zasius (1520) on the same, from the correspondence of Beatus Rhenanus, p. 230: “Miles christianus, quem tamen, si vel solus ab Erasmo exisset, immortali laude prædicare conveniebat, ut qui christiano homini veræ salutis compendium, brevi velut enchiridio demonstret.” “Luther und Erasmus,” in “Deutsch-Evangel. Blätter,” 1906, Hft. 1, in the reprint, p. 4.
[684] In a letter to P. Servatius, July 9, 1514, Erasmus says: “Voluptatibus etsi quando fui inquinatus nunquam servivi” (“Opp.,” ed. Lugd., 3, col. 1527). Perhaps he meant more by this than when he says of Thomas More, in a letter to Ulrich von Hutten, July 23, 1519, which is sometimes cited in comparison: “Cum ætas ferret, non abhorruit [Th. Morus] a puellarum amoribus, sed citra infamiam, et sic ut oblatis magis frueretur, quam captatis et animo mutuo caperetur potius quam coitu” (“Opp.,” 3, col. 474 seq.).