in him. He was a humanist, whose sympathies went with the republic of
letters, not with the wants of the soul and the needs of the people.
When he got into trouble he appealed to the pope. And though he lived
to see Luther in agonizing conflict with the hierarchy of Rome, he
refrained from making common cause with him, and died in connection
with the unreformed Church, whose doctrines he had questioned and
whose orders he had so unsparingly ridiculed.


ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM.

Erasmus was a notable man, great in talent and of great service in
preparing the way for the Reformation. He turned reviving learning to
the study of the Word. He produced the first, and for a long time the
only, critical edition of the New Testament in the original, to which
he added a Latin translation and notes. He paraphrased the Epistle to
the Romans--that great Epistle on which above all, the Reformation
moved. Though once an inmate of a monastery, he abhorred the monks and
exposed them with terrible severity. He had more friends, reputation,
and influence than perhaps any other private man in Europe. And he was
deep in the spirit of opposition to the scandalous condition of things
in the Church. But he never could have given us the Reformation. He
said all honest men sided with Luther, and as an honest man his place
would have been by Luther's side; but he was too great a coward. "If I
should join Luther," said he, "I could only perish with him, and I do
not mean to run my neck into the halter. Let popes and emperors
settle matters."--"Your Holiness says, Come to Rome; you might as well
tell a crab to fly. If I write calmly against Luther, I shall be
called lukewarm; if I write as he does, I shall stir up a hornet's
nest.... Send for the best and wisest men in Christendom, and follow