[684] Epist. Dccxix. Dec. 1524.
Estimate of it. 8. But about the time of this very publication we find Erasmus growing by degrees more averse to the radical innovations of Luther. He has been severely blamed for this by most Protestants; and doubtless, so far as an undue apprehension of giving offence to the powerful, or losing his pensions from the emperor and king of England might influence him, no one can undertake his defence. But it is to be remembered, that he did not by any means espouse all the opinions either of Luther or Zwingle; that he was disgusted at the virulent language too common among the reformers, and at the outrages committed by the populace; that he anticipated great evils from the presumptuousness of ignorant men in judging for themselves in religion; that he probably was sincere in what he always maintained as to the necessity of preserving the communion of the Catholic church, which he thought consistent with much latitude of private faith; and that, if he had gone among the reformers, he must either have concealed his real opinions more than he had hitherto done, or lived, as Melanchthon did afterwards, the victim of calumny and oppression. He had also to allege, that the fruits of the Reformation had by no means shown themselves in a more virtuous conduct; and that many heated enthusiasts were depreciating both all profane studies, and all assistance of learning in theology.[685]
[685] The letters of Erasmus, written under the spur of immediate feelings, are a perpetual commentary on the mischiefs with which the Reformation, in his opinion, was accompanied. Civitates aliquot Germaniæ implentur erroribus, desertoribus monasteriorum, sacerdotibus conjugatis, plerisque famelicis ac nudis. Nec aliud quam saltatur, editur, bibitur ac subatur; nec docent nec discunt; nulla vitæ sobrietas, nulla sinceritas. Ubicunque sunt, ibi jacent omnes bonæ disciplinæ cum pietate (1527) Epist. Dccccii. Satis jam diu audivimus, Evangelium, Evangelium, Evangelium; mores Evangelicos desideramus. Epist. Dccccxlvi. Duo tantum quærunt, censum et uxorem. Cætera præstat illis Evangelium, hoc est, potestatem vivendi ut volunt. Epist. Mvi. Tales vidi mores (Basileæ) ut etiamsi minus displicuissent dogmata, non placuisset tamen cum hujusmodi [sic] fœdus inire. Epist. Mlxvi. Both these last are addressed to Pirckheimer, who was rather more a protestant than Erasmus; so that there is no fair suspicion of temporising. The reader may also look at the 788th and 793d Epistle, on the wild doctrines of the Anabaptists and other reformers, and at the 731st, on the effects of Farel’s first preaching at Basle in 1525. See also Bayle, Farel, note B.
It is become very much the practice with our English writers to censure Erasmus for his conduct at this time. Milner rarely does justice to any one who did not servilely follow Luther. And Dr. Cox, in his life of Melanchthon, p. 35, speaks of a third party, “at the head of which the learned, witty, vacillating, avaricious, and artful Erasmus is unquestionably to be placed.” I do not deny his claim to this place; but why the last three epithets? Can Erasmus be shown to have vacillated in his tenets? If he had done so, it might be no great reproach; but his religious creed was nearly that of the moderate members of the church of Rome, nor have I observed any proof of a change in it. But vacillation may be imputed to his conduct. I hardly think this word is applicable; though he acted from particular impulses, which might make him seem a little inconsistent in spirit; and certainly wrote letters not always in the same tone, according to his own temper at the moment, or that of his correspondent. Nor was he avaricious; at least I know no proof of it; and as to the epithet artful, it ill applies to a man who was perpetually involving himself by an unguarded and imprudent behaviour. Dr. Cox proceeds to charge Erasmus with seeking a cardinal’s hat. But of this there is neither proof nor probability; he always declared his reluctance to accept that honour, and I cannot think that in any part of his life he went the right way to obtain it.
Those who arraign Erasmus so severely (and I am not undertaking the defence of every passage in his voluminous Epistles), must proceed either on the assumption that no man of his learning and ability could honestly remain in the communion of the church of Rome, which is the height of bigotry and ignorance; or that, according to his own religious opinions, it was impossible for him to do so. This is somewhat more tenable, inasmuch as it can only be answered by a good deal of attention to his writings. But from various passages in them, it may be inferred, that, though his mind was not made up on several points, and perhaps for that reason, he thought it right to follow, in assent as well as conformity, the catholic tradition of the church, and above all, not to separate from her communion. The reader may consult, for Erasmus’s opinions on some chief points of controversy, his Epistles, Dcccxxiii., Dcccclxxvii. (which Jortin has a little misunderstood), Mxxxv., Mliii., Mxciii. And see Jortin’s own fair statement of the case, i. 274.
Melanchthon had doubtless a sweeter temper and a larger measure of human charities than Erasmus, nor would I wish to vindicate one great man at the expense of another. But I cannot refrain from saying, that no passage in the letters of Erasmus is read with so much pain as that in which Melanchthon, after Luther’s death, and writing to one not very friendly, says of his connection with the founder of the Reformation, Tuli servitutem pœne deformen, &c. Epist. Melanchthon, p. 21 (edit. 1647). But the characters of literary men are cruelly tried by their correspondence, especially in an age when more conventional dissimulation was authorised by usage than at present.
His controversy with Luther. 9. In 1524, Erasmus, at the instigation of those who were resolved to dislodge him from a neutral station his timidity rather affected, published his diatribe, De Libero Arbitrio, selecting a topic upon which Luther, in the opinion of most reasonable men, was very open to attack. Luther answered in a treatise, De Servo Arbitrio, flinching not, as suited his character, from any tenet because it seemed paradoxical, or revolting to general prejudice. The controversy ended with a reply of Erasmus, entitled Hyperaspistes.[686] It is not to be understood, from the titles of these tracts, that the question of free will was discussed between Luther and Erasmus in a philosophical sense; though Melanchthon, in his Loci Communes, like the modern Calvinists, had combined the theological position of the spiritual inability of man with the metaphysical tenet of general necessity. Luther on most occasions, though not uniformly, acknowledged the freedom of the will as to indifferent actions, and also as to what they called the works of the law. But he maintained that, even when regenerated and sanctified by faith and the Spirit, man had no spiritual free will; and as before that time he could do no good, so after it, he had no power to do ill; nor, indeed, could he, in a strict sense, do either good or ill, God always working in him, so that all his acts were properly the acts of God, though, man’s will being of course the proximate cause, they might, in a secondary sense, be ascribed to him. It was this that Erasmus denied, in conformity with the doctrine afterwards held by the council of Trent, by the church of England, and, if we may depend on the statements of writers of authority, by Melanchthon and most of the later Lutherans. From the time of this controversy Luther seems to have always spoken of Erasmus with extreme ill-will; and if the other was a little more measured in his expressions, he fell not a jot behind in dislike.[687]
[686] Seckendorf took hold of a few words in a letter of Erasmus, to insinuate that he had taken a side against his conscience in writing his treatise, De Libero Arbitrio. Jortin, acute as he was, seems to have understood the passage the same way, and endeavours to explain away the sense, as if he meant only that he had undertaken the task unwillingly. Milner of course repeats the imputation; though it must be owned that, perceiving the absurdity of making Erasmus deny what in all his writings appears to have been his real opinion, he adopts Jortin’s solution. I am persuaded that they are all mistaken, and that Erasmus was no more referring to his treatise against Luther, than to the Trojan war. The words occur in an answer to a letter of Vives, written from London, wherein he had blamed some passages in the Colloquies on the usual grounds of their freedom as to ecclesiastical practices. Erasmus, rather piqued at this, after replying to the observations, insinuates to Vives, that the latter had not written of his own free will, but at the instigation of some superior. Verum, ut ingenue dicam, perdidimus liberum arbitrium. Illic mihi aliud dictabat animus, aliud scribebat calamus. By a figure of speech far from unusual, he delicately suggests his own suspicion as Vives’s apology. And the next letter of Vives leaves no room for doubt: Liberum arbitrium non perdidimus, quod tu asserueris,—words, that could have no possible meaning upon the hypothesis of Seckendorf. There is nothing in the context that can justify it; and it is equally difficult to maintain the interpretation Jortin gives of the phrase, aliud dictabat animus, aliud scribebat calamus, which can mean nothing but that he wrote what he did not think. The letters are Dcccxxix. Dccclxxi. Dccclxxvi. in Erasmus’s Epistles; or the reader may turn to Jortin, i. 413.
[687] Many of Luther’s strokes at Erasmus occur in the Colloquia Mensalia, which I quote from the translation. “Erasmus can do nothing but cavil and flout, he cannot confute.” “I charge you in my will and testament, that you hate and loath Erasmus, that viper.” ch. xliv. “He called Erasmus an epicure and ungodly creature, for thinking that if God dealed with men here on earth as they deserved, it would not go so ill with the good, or so well with the wicked.” ch. vii. Lutherus, says the other, sic respondit (diatribæ De Libero Arbitrio), ut antehac in neminem virulentius; et homo suavis post editum librum per literas dejerat se in me esse animo candidissimo, ac propemodum postulat, ut ipsi gratias agam, quod me tam civiliter tractavit, longe aliter scripturus si cum hoste fuisset res. Ep. Dcccxxxvi.
Character of his epistles. 10. The epistles of Erasmus, which occupy two folio volumes in the best edition of his works, are a vast treasure for the ecclesiastical and literary history of his times. Morhof advises the student to commonplace them; a task which, even in his age, few would have spared leisure to perform, and which the good index of the Leyden edition renders less important. Few men carry on so long and extensive a correspondence without affording some vulnerable points to the criticism of posterity. The failings of Erasmus have been already adverted to; it is from his own letters that we derive our chief knowledge of them. An extreme sensibility to blame in his own person, with little regard to that of others; a genuine warmth of friendship towards some, but an artificial pretence of it too frequently assumed; an inconsistency of profession both as to persons and opinions, partly arising from the different character of his correspondents, but in a great degree from the varying impulses of his ardent mind, tend to abate that respect which the name of Erasmus at first excites, and which, on a candid estimate of his whole life, and the tenor even of this correspondence, it ought to retain. He was the first conspicuous enemy of ignorance and superstition, the first restorer of Christian morality on a scriptural foundation, and, notwithstanding the ridiculous assertion of some moderns that he wanted theological learning, the first who possessed it in its proper sense, and applied it to its proper end.