the wish: "May the Lord Jesus grant you daily more of his Spirit for his glory and the general
good."^528
So far, then, he objected not so much to the matter as to the manner of Luther, whose plebeian
violence and roughness offended his cultured taste. But there was a deeper difference. He could
not appreciate his cardinal doctrine of justification by faith alone, and took offence at the denial of
free-will and human merit. He held the Catholic views on these subjects. He wished a reform of
the discipline, but not of the faith, of the church, and cared little for dogmatic controversies.
His gradual alienation may be seen in the following extracts from his letters.
To Albrecht, Cardinal-Archbishop of Mainz, he wrote from Louvain, Nov. 1, 1519: –
"Permit me to say that I have never had any thing to do either with the affair of Reuchlin
or with the cause of Luther. I have never taken any interest in the Cabbala or the Talmud.
Those virulent contentions between Reuchlin and the party of Hochstraten have been
extremely distasteful to me. Luther is a perfect stranger to me, and I have never had time
to read his books beyond merely glancing over a few pages. If he has written well, no
praise is due to me; if not, it would be unjust to hold me responsible .... Luther had written
to me in a very Christian tone, as I thought; and I replied, advising him incidentally not
to write any thing against the Roman Pontiff, nor to encourage a proud or intolerant spirit,
but to preach the gospel out of a pure heart .... I am neither Luther’s accuser, nor advocate,
nor judge; his heart I would not presume to judge—for that is always a matter of extreme
difficulty—still less would I condemn. And yet if I were to defend him, as a good man,
which even his enemies admit him to be; as one put upon his trial, a duty which the laws
permit even to sworn judges; as one persecuted—which would be only in accordance with
the dictates of humanity—and trampled on by the bounden enemies of learning, who
merely use him as a handle for the accomplishment of their designs, where would be the
blame, so long as I abstained from mixing myself up with his cause? In short, I think it
is my duty as a Christian to support Luther in this sense, that, if he is innocent, I should
not wish him to be crushed by a set of malignant villains; if he is in error, I would rather
see him put right than destroyed: for thus I should be acting in accordance with the example
of Christ, who, as the prophet witnesseth, quencheth not the smoking flax, nor breaketh
the bruised reed."
To Pope Leo X., from Louvain, Sept. 13, 1520 (three months after the excommunication
of Luther, June 15): –
"I have no acquaintance with Luther, nor have I ever read his books, except perhaps
ten or twelve pages, and that only by snatches. From what I then saw, I judged him to be
well qualified for expounding the Scriptures in the manner of the Fathers,—a work greatly
needed in an age like this, which is so excessively given to mere subtleties, to the neglect
of really important questions. Accordingly, I have favored his good, but not his bad,
qualities, or rather I have favored Christ’s glory in him. I was among the first to foresee(^528) Ems., Epist. 427. See the first letter of Luther (March 28, 1519), the reply of Erasmus (May 30), and a second letter of Luther (April,
1524), and the reply of Erasmus (May 5), in Latin in Er. Epist., in German in Walch, vol. XVIII., 1944 sqq., and in the Appendix to
Müller’s Erasmus, pp. 385-395. The two letters of Luther to Erasmus are also given in Latin by De Wette, I. 247-249, and II. 498-501.