prelates--has spread far and wide, so that scarcely any one is to be
found who does right, and who is free from infection. Nevertheless, the
evils have become so ancient and manifold, that it will be necessary to
go step by step."

In those passionate days, the ardent reformers were as much outraged by
this pregnant confession as the ecclesiastics. It would indeed be a slow
process, they thought, to move step by step in the Reformation, if
between each step, a whole century was to intervene. In vain did the
gentle pontiff call upon Erasmus to assuage the stormy sea with his
smooth rhetoric. The Sage of Rotterdam was old and sickly; his day was
over. Adrian's head; too; languishes beneath the triple crown but twenty
months. He dies 13th Sept., 1523, having arrived at the conviction,
according to his epitaph, that the greatest misfortune of his life was to
have reigned.

Another edict, published in the Netherlands, forbids all private
assemblies for devotion; all reading of the scriptures; all discussions
within one's own doors concerning faith, the sacraments, the papal
authority, or other religious matter, under penalty of death. The edicts
were no dead letter. The fires were kept constantly supplied with human
fuel by monks, who knew the art of burning reformers better than that of
arguing with them. The scaffold was the most conclusive of syllogisms,
and used upon all occasions. Still the people remained unconvinced.
Thousands of burned heretics had not made a single convert.

A fresh edict renewed and sharpened the punishment for reading the
scriptures in private or public. At the same time, the violent personal
altercation between Luther and Erasmus, upon predestination, together
with the bitter dispute between Luther and Zwingli concerning the real