for St. Augustin and indorsing his anthropology, never sanctioned his views on total depravity and
unconditional predestination, but condemned them, indirectly, in the Jansenists.^542
Final Alienation.
The Erasmus-Luther controversy led to some further personalities in which both parties
forgot what they owed to their cause and their own dignity. Erasmus wrote a bitter retort, entitled
"Hyperaspistes," and drove Luther’s predestinarian views to fatalistic and immoral consequences.
He also addressed a letter of complaint to Elector John. The outrages of the Peasants’ War confirmed
him in his apprehensions. He was alienated from Melanchthon and Justus Jonas. He gave up
correspondence with Zwingli, and rather rejoiced in his death.^543 He spoke of the Reformation as
a tragedy, or rather a comedy which always ended in a marriage. He regarded it as a public calamity
which brought ruin to arts and letters, and anarchy to the Church.^544
He was summoned to the Diet of Augsburg, 1530, as a counsellor of the Emperor, but
declined because he was sick and conscious of his inability to please either party. He wrote, however,
to Cardinal Campeggio, to the bishop of Augsburg, and other friends, to protest against settling
questions of doctrine by the sword. His remedy for the evils of the Church was mutual forbearance
and the correction of abuses. But his voice was not heeded; the time for compromises and half
measures had passed, and the controversy took its course. He devoted his later years chiefly to the
editing of new editions of his Greek Testament, and the writings of the church fathers.
Luther abandoned Erasmus, and abused him as the vainest creature in the world, as an
enraged viper, a refined Epicurean, a modern Lucian, a scoffer, a disguised atheist, and enemy of
all religion.^545 We gladly return from this gross injustice to his earlier estimate, expressed in his
letter to Erasmus as late as April, 1524: "The whole world must bear witness to your successful
cultivation of that literature by which we arrive at a true understanding of the Scriptures; and this
gift of God has been magnificently and wonderfully displayed in you, calling for our thanks."
§ 74. Wilibald Pirkheimer.
Bilibaldi Pirkheimeri Opera politica, historica, philologica, et epistolica, ed. by M. Goldast, Francf.,
1610, fol. With a portrait by A. Dürer. His Encomium Podagrae was translated into English by
W. Est, The Praise of the Gout, or the Gout’s Apology, a paradox both pleasant and profitable.
Lond., 1617.
Lampe: Zum Andenken W. P.’s. Nürnberg, 1828. Karl Hagen: Deutschlands literarische und relig.
Verhältnisse im Ref. Zeitalter. Mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Wilibald Pirkheimer. Erlangen,
(^542) Ibid., I. 102 sqq. Among the condemned propositions of Quesnel are these: "The grace of Christ is necessary for every good work;
without it nothing can be done.""The will of man, before conversion by prevenient grace, is capable of all evil and incapable of good."
(^543) When he heard of it in 1531, he wrote to a friend, "It is a good thing that two of their leaders have perished,—Zwingli on the
battle-field, and Oecolampadius shortly after of fever and abscess."—Op. III. 1422.
(^544) He gives a deplorable picture of the demoralizing effects of the Reformation in a letter to Geldenhauer in 1526, Opera X. 1578-1580,
quoted in full in Latin and German by Döllinger, Die Reformation, I. 13-15. The Strasburg preachers, Capito, Bucer, and Hedio, tried to
refute the charges in 1530. Erasmus again came out with the charge, among others, that luxury was never greater, nor adulteries more
frequent, than among the self-styled evangelicals, and appeals in confirmation to admissions of Luther, Melanchthon, and Oecolampadius.
Some of his last letters, discovered and published by Horawitz (Erasmiana, 1885, No. IV. p. 44 sqq.), contain similar complaints.
(^545) In his letter to Link, March 7, 1529 (in De Wette, III. 426 sq.), he calls Erasmus "ἄθεον, Lucianumque, Epicurum," and in a letter
to his son John, 1533 (De Wette, IV. 497), he says: "Erasmus, hostis omnium religiorum et inimicus singularis Christi, Epicuri Lucianique
perfectum exemplar et idea." Comp. his judgments in the Tischreden, LXI. 93-113 (Erl. ed.).