Hutten, however, was avenged upon Erasmus living. One of his adherents, Henry of Eppendorff, inherited Hutten's bitter disgust with Erasmus and persecuted him for years. Getting hold of one of Erasmus's letters in which he was denounced, he continually threatened him with an action for defamation of character. Eppendorff's hostility so thoroughly exasperated Erasmus that he fancied he could detect his machinations and spies everywhere even after the actual persecution had long ceased.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] Melanchthon, Opera, Corpus Reformatorum, XII 266, where he refers to Querela pacis, which, however, was not written before 1517; vide A. 603 and I p. 37.10.
CHAPTER XVIII
CONTROVERSY WITH LUTHER AND GROWING CONSERVATISM
1524-6
Erasmus persuaded to write against Luther—De Libero Arbitrio: 1524—Luther's answer: De Servo Arbitrio—Erasmus's indefiniteness contrasted with Luther's extreme rigour—Erasmus henceforth on the side of conservatism—The Bishop of Basle and Oecolampadius—Erasmus's half-hearted dogmatics: confession, ceremonies, worship of the Saints, Eucharist—Institutio Christiani Matrimonii: 1526—He feels surrounded by enemies
At length Erasmus was led, in spite of all, to do what he had always tried to avoid: he wrote against Luther. But it did not in the least resemble the geste Erasmus at one time contemplated, in the cause of peace in Christendom and uniformity of faith, to call a halt to the impetuous Luther, and thereby to recall the world to its senses. In the great act of the Reformation their polemics were merely an after-play. Not Erasmus alone was disillusioned and tired—Luther too was past his heroic prime, circumscribed by conditions, forced into the world of affairs, a disappointed man.
Erasmus had wished to persevere in his resolution to remain a spectator of the great tragedy. 'If, as appears from the wonderful success of Luther's cause, God wills all this'—thus did Erasmus reason—'and He has perhaps judged such a drastic surgeon as Luther necessary for the corruption of these times, then it is not my business to withstand him.' But he was not left in peace. While he went on protesting that he had nothing to do with Luther and differed widely from him, the defenders of the old Church adhered to the standpoint urged as early as 1520 by Nicholas of Egmond before the rector of Louvain: 'So long as he refuses to write against Luther, we take him to be a Lutheran'. So matters stood. 'That you are looked upon as a Lutheran here is certain,' Vives writes to him from the Netherlands in 1522.
Ever stronger became the pressure to write against Luther. From Henry VIII came a call, communicated by Erasmus's old friend Tunstall, from George of Saxony, from Rome itself, whence Pope Adrian VI, his old patron, had urged him shortly before his death.