“In Luther I find to my surprise two different persons,” Erasmus wrote on March 13, 1526, to Bishop Michael of Langres. “One writes in such a way that he seems to breathe the apostolic spirit, the other makes use of such unbecoming invective as to appear to be altogether unmindful of it.”[708] To another bishop, on September 1, 1528, he writes: “Whatever of good there may be in Luther’s teaching and exhortations we shall put in practice, not because it emanates from him, but because it is true and agrees with Holy Scripture.”[709]
He continued to scourge the abuses in ecclesiastical life and to demand a reformation, but he did so in a fashion more measured and dignified than formerly, so that well-disposed Catholics for the most part agreed with him.
Owing to the new position he assumed, the Popes did not repel him, but showed him favour and confidence. They were desirous of retaining him and his enormous influence for the good of the Church. A Spanish theologian, who had written an “Antapologia” against Erasmus to reinforce the attack made upon him by Prince Carpi, tells us that Clement VII, after glancing through the work, said to him: “The Holy See has never set the seal of its approbation on the spirit of Erasmus and his writings, but it has spared him in order that he might not separate himself from the Church and embrace the cause of Lutheranism to the detriment of our interests.”[710] According to one account, Paul III even wished to make him a cardinal; Erasmus, however, refused this dignity on account of his age.
Luther for his part was fond of saying, that he merely spoke out plainly what Erasmus in his timidity only ventured to hint at. He himself, he tells a correspondent, had led the believing Christians into the Promised Land, whereas Erasmus had conducted them only as far as the land of Moab.[711] He recognised, however, the great difference between himself and Erasmus in their fundamental theological views, for instance, as to the condition of man stained by original sin, as to his free-will for doing what is good, his justification and pardon, on all of which the Humanist scholar held fast to the traditional teaching of the Church because, so Luther says, he could not, or would not, understand the Bible. Luther was well aware that, as time went on, Erasmus frequently protested that he had never had any intention of writing anything contrary to the revealed Word of God as taught by Holy Scripture and the common faith of Christendom; that he submitted himself to the decisions of the Popes, that he was ready to accept, as the Voice of God, what the authorities of the Church taught, even though he might not understand the reasons, and be personally inclined to embrace the opposite. His standpoint was accordingly miles removed from that of Luther with its unfettered freedom in religious matters.[712]
In one of his Apologies Erasmus states of his earlier writings—in which, it is true he often goes too far—that “neither Lutherans nor anti-Lutherans could clearly show him to have called into question any single dogma of the Church”; though numbers had tried hard to do so, they had merely succeeded in “bringing forward affinities, congruities, grounds for scandal and suspicion, and not a few big fibs.”[713] Concerning his tendency to scepticism he says nothing.
Of the excessive zeal of certain critics he says in the same passage: “Some theologians, in their hatred for Luther, condemn good and pious sayings which do not emanate from us at all, but from Christ and the Apostles. Thus, owing to their malice and stupidity, many remain in the party adverse to the Church who would otherwise have forsaken it, and many join it who would otherwise have kept aloof.” He himself was not to be drawn by invective to embrace Luther’s cause. He even ventures to affirm that he was the first, who, almost single-handed (“ipse primus omnium ac pene solus restiti pullulanti malo”), opposed Luther, and that he had proved a true prophet in predicting that the play which the world had greeted with such warm applause would have a sad termination.—He speaks more truly when he seriously regrets having fanned the flames by his writings. Thus, in 1521, he writes to Baron Mountjoy: “Had I known beforehand that things would shape themselves so, I would either have refrained from writing certain things, or have written them differently.”[714]
If Luther, after having met with strong opposition from Erasmus, in place of the support he had anticipated, denounced him as an infidel Epicurean, he only demonstrated anew how far passion and bitter disappointment could carry him.[715] “Luther,” says Kawerau, “when passing judgment on Erasmus, sees only the dark side of his character, and this the more as years go by.” “In his writings, and even in his most harmless utterances, Luther scents evil. In the contempt he pours upon him he is often grossly unfair, and, as a whole, his judgment of him does not do justice either to the greatness or the character of Erasmus.”[716]
Even where Luther does not actually attribute unbelief and untruthfulness to his opponent he frequently goes too far in blaming his sarcasm. He says, for instance, at a later date, that Erasmus could do nothing but jeer; that to refute or disprove anything he was utterly unable. “If I were Papist I would easily get the upper hand of him.... By merely laughing at opponents no one will succeed in vanquishing them.”[717] He could see in Erasmus only the idle cynic Lucian and nothing else. As early as 1517 he declaims against the “Erasmic” habit of “making fun of the faults and miseries of the Church of Christ instead of bewailing them before God with deep sighs.” It has, however, been pointed out by a Protestant theologian that such serious complaints concerning the disorders in the Church are not lacking even in the earlier writings of Erasmus.[718]
A severe but not unfair criticism of Erasmus—which does not charge him with unbelief or apostasy though censuring him for other grave faults—is to be met with in two German writers, both of them well conversant with their age, viz. Kilian Leib, Prior of the monastery of Rebdorf, and Bl. Peter Canisius.