Erasmus was at this time forty years old—the age when ambition becomes powerful in men, and takes the place of love of pleasure. He was received at Rome with princely distinction, and he could have asked for nothing—bishoprics, red hats, or red stockings—which would not have been freely given to him if he would have consented to remain.
But he was too considerable a man to be tempted by finery; and the Pope's livery, gorgeous though it might be, was but a livery after all. Nothing which Leo the Tenth could do for Erasmus could add lustre to his coronet. More money he might have had, but of money he had already abundance, and outward dignity would have been dearly bought by gilded chains. He resisted temptation; he preferred the northern air, where he could breathe at liberty, and he returned to England, half inclined to make his home there.
But his own sovereign laid claim to his services; the future emperor recalled him to the Low Countries, settled a handsome salary upon him, and established him at the University of Louvaine.
He was now in the zenith of his greatness. He had an income as large as many an English nobleman. We find him corresponding with popes, cardinals, kings, and statesmen; and as he grew older, his mind became more fixed upon serious subjects. The ignorance and brutality of the monks, the corruption of the spiritual courts, the absolute irreligion in which the Church was steeped, gave him serious alarm. He had no enthusiasms, no doctrinal fanaticisms, no sectarian beliefs or superstitions. The breadth of his culture, his clear understanding, and the worldly moderation of his temper, seemed to qualify him above living men to conduct a temperate reform. He saw that the system around him was pregnant with danger, and he resolved to devote what remained to him of life to the introduction of a higher tone in the minds of the clergy.
The revival of learning had by this time alarmed the religious orders. Literature and education, beyond the code of the theological text-books, appeared simply devilish to them. When Erasmus returned to Louvaine, the battle was raging over the north of Europe.
The Dominicans at once recognised in Erasmus their most dangerous enemy. At first they tried to compel him to re-enter the order, but, strong in the Pope's dispensation, he was so far able to defy them. They could bark at his heels, but dared not come to closer quarters: and with his temper slightly ruffled, but otherwise contented to despise them, he took up boldly the task which he had set himself.
'We kiss the old shoes of the saints,' he said, 'but we never read their works.' He undertook the enormous labour of editing and translating selections from the writings of the Fathers. The New Testament was as little known as the lost books of Tacitus—all that the people knew of the Gospels and the Epistles were the passages on which theologians had built up the Catholic formulas. Erasmus published the text, and with it, and to make it intelligible, a series of paraphrases, which rent away the veil of traditional and dogmatic interpretation, and brought the teaching of Christ and the Apostles into their natural relation with reason and conscience.
In all this, although the monks might curse, he had countenance and encouragement from the great ecclesiastics in all parts of Europe—and it is highly curious to see the extreme freedom with which they allowed him to propose to them his plans for a Reformation—we seem to be listening to the wisest of modern broad Churchmen.
To one of his correspondents, an archbishop, he writes:—
'Let us have done with theological refinements. There is an excuse for the Fathers, because the heretics forced them to define particular points; but every definition is a misfortune, and for us to persevere in the same way is sheer folly. Is no man to be admitted to grace who does not know how the Father differs from the Son, and both from the Spirit? or how the nativity of the Son differs from the procession of the Spirit? Unless I forgive my brother his sins against me, God will not forgive me my sins. Unless I have a pure heart—unless I put away envy, hate, pride, avarice, lust, I shall not see God. But a man is not damned because he cannot tell whether the Spirit has one principle or two. Has he the fruits of the Spirit? That is the question. Is he patient, kind, good, gentle, modest, temperate, chaste? Enquire if you will, but do not define. True religion is peace, and we cannot have peace unless we leave the conscience unshackled on obscure points on which certainty is impossible. We hear now of questions being referred to the next Œcumenical Council—better a great deal refer them to doomsday. Time was, when a man's faith was looked for in his life, not in the Articles which he professed. Necessity first brought Articles upon us, and ever since, we have refined and refined till Christianity has become a thing of words and creeds. Articles increase—sincerity vanishes away—contention grows hot, and charity grows cold. Then comes in the civil power, with stake and gallows, and men are forced to profess what they do not believe, to pretend to love what in fact they hate, and to say that they understand what in fact has no meaning for them.'