Chapter 19

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.

Erasmus thought he could refuse no longer. He tried some dialogues in the style of the _Colloquies_, but did not get on with them; and probably they would not have pleased those who were desirous of enlisting his services. Between Luther and Erasmus himself there had been no personal correspondence, since the former had promised him, in 1520; 'Well then, Erasmus, I shall not mention your name again.' Now that Erasmus had prepared to attack Luther, however, there came an epistle from the latter, written on 15 April 1524, in which the reformer, in his turn, requested Erasmus in his own words: 'Please remain now what you have always professed yourself desirous of being: a mere spectator of our tragedy'. There is a ring of ironical contempt in Luther's words, but Erasmus called the letter 'rather humane; I had not the courage to reply with equal humanity, because of the sycophants'.

In order to be able to combat Luther with a clear conscience Erasmus had naturally to choose a point on which he differed from Luther in his heart. It was not one of the more superficial parts of the Church's structure. For these he either, with Luther, cordially rejected, such as ceremonies, observances, fasting, etc., or, though more moderately than Luther, he had his doubts about them, as the sacraments or the primacy of St. Peter. So he naturally came to the point where the deepest gulf yawned between their natures, between their conceptions of the essence of faith, and thus to the central and eternal problem of good and evil, guilt and compulsion, liberty and bondage, God and man. Luther confessed in his reply that here indeed the vital point had been touched.

_De libero arbitrio diatribe_ (_A Disquisition upon Free Will_) appeared in September 1524. Was Erasmus qualified to write about such a subject? In conformity with his method and with his evident purpose to vindicate authority and tradition, this time, Erasmus developed the argument that Scripture teaches, doctors affirm, philosophers prove, and human reason testifies man's will to be free. Without acknowledgement of free will the terms of God's justice and God's mercy remain without meaning. What would be the sense of the teachings, reproofs, admonitions of Scripture (Timothy iii.) if all happened according to mere and inevitable necessity? To what purpose is obedience praised, if for good and evil works we are equally but tools to God, as the hatchet to the carpenter? And if this were so, it would be dangerous to reveal such a doctrine to the multitude, for morality is dependent on the consciousness of freedom.

Luther received the treatise of his antagonist with disgust and contempt. In writing his reply, however, he suppressed these feelings outwardly and observed the rules of courtesy. But his inward anger is revealed in the contents itself of _De servo arbitrio_ (_On the Will not free_). For here he really did what Erasmus had just reproached him with--trying to heal a dislocated member by tugging at it in the opposite direction. More fiercely than ever before, his formidable boorish mind drew the startling inferences of his burning faith. Without any reserve he now accepted all the extremes of absolute determinism. In order to confute indeterminism in explicit terms, he was now forced to have recourse to those primitive metaphors of exalted faith striving to express the inexpressible: God's two wills, which do not coincide, God's 'eternal hatred of mankind, a hatred not only on account of demerits and the works of free will, but a hatred that existed even before the world was created', and that metaphor of the human will, which, as a riding beast, stands in the middle between God and the devil and which is mounted by one or the other without being able to move towards either of the two contending riders. If anywhere, Luther's doctrine in _De Servo Arbitrio_ means a recrudescence of faith and a straining of religious conceptions.

But it was Luther who here stood on the rockbed of a profound and mystic faith in which the absolute conscience of the eternal pervades all. In him all conceptions, like dry straw, were consumed in the glow of God's majesty, for him each human co-operation to attain to salvation was a profanation of God's glory. Erasmus's mind after all did not truly _live_ in the ideas which were here disputed, of sin and grace, of redemption and the glory of God as the final cause of all that is.

Was, then, Erasmus's cause in all respects inferior? Was Luther right at the core? Perhaps. Dr. Murray rightly reminds us of Hegel's saying that tragedy is not the conflict between right and wrong, but the conflict between right and right. The combat of Luther and Erasmus proceeded beyond the point at which our judgement is forced to halt and has to accept an equivalence, nay, a compatibility of affirmation and negation. And this fact, that they here were fighting with words and metaphors in a sphere beyond that of what may be known and expressed, was understood by Erasmus. Erasmus, the man of the fine shades, for whom ideas eternally blended into each other and interchanged, called a Proteus by Luther; Luther the man of over-emphatic expression about all matters. The Dutchman, who sees the sea, was opposed to the German, who looks out on mountain tops.

'This is quite true that we cannot speak of God but with inadequate words.' 'Many problems should be deferred, not to the oecumenical Council, but till the time when, the glass and the darkness having been taken away, we shall see God face to face.' 'What is free of error?' 'There are in sacred literature certain sanctuaries into which God has not willed that we should penetrate further.'

The Catholic Church had on the point of free will reserved to itself some slight proviso, left a little elbow-room to the consciousness of human liberty _under_ grace. Erasmus conceived that liberty in a considerably broader spirit. Luther absolutely denied it. The opinion of contemporaries was at first too much dominated by their participation in the great struggle as such: they applauded Erasmus, because he struck boldly at Luther, or the other way about, according to their sympathies. Not only Vives applauded Erasmus, but also more orthodox Catholics such as Sadolet. The German humanists, unwilling, for the most part, to break with the ancient Church, were moved by Erasmus's attack to turn their backs still more upon Luther: Mutianus, Zasius, and Pirckheimer. Even Melanchthon inclined to Erasmus's standpoint. Others, like Capito, once a zealous supporter, now washed their hands of him. Soon Calvin with the iron cogency of his argument was completely to take Luther's side.

It is worth while to quote the opinion of a contemporary Catholic scholar about the relations of Erasmus and Luther. 'Erasmus,' says F. X. Kiefl,[19] 'with his concept of free, unspoiled human nature was intrinsically much more foreign to the Church than Luther. He only combated it, however, with haughty scepticism: for which reason Luther with subtle psychology upbraided him for liking to speak of the shortcomings and the misery of the Church of Christ in such a way that his readers could not help laughing, instead of bringing his charges, with deep sighs, as beseemed before God.'

The _Hyperaspistes_, a voluminous treatise in which Erasmus again addressed Luther, was nothing but an epilogue, which need not be discussed here at length.

Erasmus had thus, at last, openly taken sides. For, apart from the dogmatical point at issue itself, the most important part about _De libero arbitrio_ was that in it he had expressly turned against the individual religious conceptions and had spoken in favour of the authority and tradition of the Church. He always regarded himself as a Catholic. 'Neither death nor life shall draw me from the communion of the Catholic Church,' he writes in 1522, and in the _Hyperaspistes_ in 1526: 'I have never been an apostate from the Catholic Church. I know that in this Church, which you call the Papist Church, there are many who displease me, but such I also see in your Church. One bears more easily the evils to which one is accustomed. Therefore I bear with this Church, until I shall see a better, and it cannot help bearing with me, until I shall myself be better. And he does not sail badly who steers a middle course between two several evils.'

But was it possible to keep to that course? On either side people turned away from him. 'I who, formerly, in countless letters was addressed as thrice great hero, Prince of letters, Sun of studies, Maintainer of true theology, am now ignored, or represented in quite different colours,' he writes. How many of his old friends and congenial spirits had already gone!

A sufficient number remained, however, who thought and hoped as Erasmus