so important as to warrant the banishment of all charity. 'How many, too, are there (and this is surely worst СНАР. XVI. of all) who, relying on the assurances of their monastic A.D. 1519. profession, inwardly raise their crests so high that they 'seem to themselves to move in the heavens, and re clining among the solar rays, to look down from on high upon the people creeping on the ground like ants, looking down thus, not only on the ungodly, but also upon all who are without the circle of the 'enclosure of their order, so that for the most part nothing is holy but what they do themselves. . 6 They make more of things which appertain specially to the religious order, than of those valueless and very humble things which are in no way peculiar to them. 'but entirely common to all Christian people, such as the vulgar virtues-faith, hope, charity, the fear of 6 God, humility, and others of the kind. Nor, indeed, ' is this a new thing. Nay, it is what Christ long ago ' denounced to his chosen people, "Ye make the word ""of God of none effect through your traditions." “of 'There are multitudes enough who would be afraid that the devil would come upon them and take them ' alive to hell, if, forsooth, they were to set aside their 'usual garb, whom nothing can move when they are ' grasping at money. Are there only a few, think you, who would deem it a crime to be expiated with many tears, if they were to omit a line in their hourly prayers, and yet have no 'fearful scruple at all, when they profane themselves by the worst and most infamous lies?. . . . Indeed, • I once knew a man devoted to the religious life-one of that class who would nowadays be thought "most religious." This man, by no means a novice, but 6 6.66 More re anecdote. lates an CHAP. XVI. A.D. 1519. 6 one who had passed many years in what they call regular observances, and had advanced so far in them 'that he was even set over a convent-but, nevertheless, 'more careless of the precepts of God than of monastic 'rites-slid down from one crime to another, till at 'length he went so far as to meditate the most atrocious ' of all crimes-a crime execrable beyond belief—and 'what is more, not a simple crime, but one pregnant 'with manifold guilt, for he even purposed to add 'sacrilege to murders and parricide. When this man thought himself insufficient without accomplices for 'the perpetration of so many crimes, he associated ⚫ with himself some ruffians and cutpurses. They com'mitted the most horrible crimes which I ever heard of. They were all of them thrown together into prison. I do not wish to give the details, and I abstain from the names of the criminals, lest I should renew anything of past hatred to an innocent order. 6 6 6 But to proceed to narrate the circumstances on account of which I have mentioned this affair. I heard from those wicked assassins that, when they came to that religious man in his chamber, they had 'not spoken of the crime; but being introduced into his private chapel, they appeased the sacred Virgin by a salutation on their bent knees according to 'custom. This being properly accomplished, they at • length rose purely and piously to perpetrate their 'crime! . . 6 Now, I have not mentioned this with the view ' either to defame the religion of the monks with these crimes, since the same soil may bring forth useful herbs and pestiferous weeds, or to condemn the rites of those who occasionally salute the sacred Virgin, 'than which nothing is more beneficial; but because 'people trust so much in such things that under the 6 СНАР. XVI. very security which they thus feel they give them- A.D. 1519, 'selves up to crime. From reflections such as these you may learn the lesson which the occasion suggests. That you should 'not grow too proud of your own sect-nothing could 'be more fatal. Nor trust in private observances. 'That you should place your hopes rather in the Chris'tian faith than in your own; and not trust in those things which you can do for yourself, but in those 'which you cannot do without God's help. You can 'fast by yourself, you can keep vigils by yourself, you can say prayers by yourself—and you can do these things by the devil! But, verily, Christian faith, 'which Christ Jesus truly said to be in spirit; Chris'tian hope, which, despairing of its own merits, confides only in the mercy of God; Christian charity, which is not puffed up, is not made angry, does not seek its 6 6 own glory,—none, indeed, can attain these except by the grace and gracious help of God alone.' By how much the more you place your trust in those virtues which are common to Christendom, by so much the less will you have faith in private ceremonies, whether those of your order or your ' own; and by how much the less you trust in them by so much the more will they be useful. For then ' at last God will esteem you a faithful servant, when you shall count yourself good for nothing.' That these passages prove that More and his friends. had not set aside monasticism, or even Mariolatry, as altogether wrong, cannot be too clearly recognised. In an age of transition it is the direction of the thoughts CHAP. XVI. A.D. 1519. and aims of men which constitutes the radical difference or agreement between them, rather than the exact distance that each may have travelled on the same road. Luther himself had not yet in his hatred of ceremonies travelled so far as the Oxford Reformers, though in after years he went farther, because he travelled faster than they did. Upon these questions they were very much practically at one. And if here and there the three friends observed in Luther an impetuosity which carried him into extremes, much as they might differ from some of his statements, and the tone he sometimes adopted, their respect for his moral earnestness, and their perception of the amount of exasperation to which his hot nature was exposed, made them readily pardon what they could not approve. They had as yet little idea-though More's letter showed that they had some much less than Luther himself had-how practically important was the difference between them. For the moment their two orbits seemed almost to coincide. They seemed even to be approaching each other. They seemed to meet in their common hatred of the formalism of the monks, in their common attempt to grasp at the spirit-the reality-of religion through its forms and shadows. They had little idea that they were crossing each other's path, and that ere long, as each pursued his course, the divergence would become wider and wider. V. ERASMUS AND THE REFORMERS OF WITTEMBERG (1519). In the summer of 1518 Melanchthon had joined Luther at Wittemberg. During the remainder of that year the controversy on Indulgences was going on. CHAP. Elector of Rome had taken the matter up. Luther had appeared before the Papal legate Cajetan, and from his harsh demand of simple recantation, had shrunk with horror A.D. 1519. and fled back into Saxony. The legate had threatened that Rome would never let the matter drop, and urged the Elector of Saxony to send Luther to Rome. But Luther protected he had made common cause with the poor monk, and by the refused to banish him. Leo X. was afraid to quarrel Saxony. with Frederic of Saxony, and under the auspices of Miltitz, aided by the moderation of Luther and the firmness of his protector, a little oil was thrown on the troubled waters. But in the spring of 1519, when the Papal tenths came to be exacted, murmurs were heard again on all sides. Hutten commenced his series of satirical pamphlets, and it became evident that the storm was not permanently laid, the lull might last for a while, but fresh tempests were ahead.1 It was during this interval of uncertainty that the first intercourse took place between Erasmus and the Wittemberg Reformers. 6 thon's Erasmus. Letters had already passed between Melanchthon Melanchand Erasmus; they had been known to one another opinion of by name for some years, and were on the best of terms. Thus Melanchthon, in writing to a friend of his in January 1519, spoke of Erasmus as the first to 'call back theology to her fountain-head,'2 and of Luther as belonging to the same school. He freely admitted how much greater was the learning of Erasmus than that of Luther, and when in March he received from Froben a copy of the 'Method of True 1 For the above particulars see 2 Melanchthonis Epistola: BretRanke's History of the Reformation, schneider, i. p. 63, and p. 66. bk. ii. c. iii. |