Erasmus determined to gratify Adrian with least danger to himself and least injury to Luther.
'I remember Uzzah, and am afraid,' he said, in his quizzing way; 'it is not everyone who is allowed to uphold the ark. Many a wise man has attacked Luther, and what has been effected? The Pope curses, the emperor threatens; there are prisons, confiscations, faggots; and all is vain. What can a poor pigmy like me do?
'The world has been besotted with ceremonies. Miserable monks have ruled all, entangling men's consciences for their own benefit. Dogma has been heaped on dogma. The bishops have been tyrants, the Pope's commissaries have been rascals. Luther has been an instrument of God's displeasure, like Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar, or the Cæsars, and I shall not attack him on such grounds as these.'
Erasmus was too acute to defend against Luther the weak point of a bad cause. He would not declare for him—but he would not go over to his enemies. Yet, unless he quarrelled with Adrian, he could not be absolutely silent; so he chose a subject to write upon on which all schools of theology, Catholic or Protestant—all philosophers, all thinkers of whatever kind, have been divided from the beginning of time: fate and free will, predestination and the liberty of man—a problem which has no solution—which may be argued even from eternity to eternity.
The reason of the selection was obvious. Erasmus wished to please the Pope and not exasperate Luther. Of course he pleased neither, and offended both.
Luther, who did not comprehend his motive, was needlessly angry. Adrian and the monks were openly contemptuous. Sick of them and their quarrels, he grew weary of the world, and began to wish to be well out of it.
It is characteristic of Erasmus that, like many highly-gifted men, but unlike all theologians, he expressed a hope for sudden death, and declared it to be one of the greatest blessings which a human creature can receive.
Do not suppose that he broke down or showed the white feather to fortune's buffets. Through all storms he stuck bravely to his own proper work; editing classics, editing the Fathers, writing paraphrases—still doing for Europe what no other man could have done.
The Dominicans hunted him away from Louvaine. There was no living for him in Germany for the Protestants. He suffered dreadfully from the stone, too, and in all ways had a cruel time of it. Yet he continued, for all that, to make life endurable.