Short Studies on Great Subjects Part 9

So to Luther, so to the people, Erasmus preached moderation. It was like preaching to the winds in a hurricane. The typhoon itself is not wilder than human creatures when once their pa.s.sions are stirred. You cannot check them; but, if you are brave, you can guide them wisely. And this, Erasmus had not the heart to do.

He said at the beginning, 'I will not countenance revolt against authority. A bad government is better than none.' But he said at the same time, 'You bishops, cease to be corrupt: you popes and cardinals, reform your wicked courts: you monks, leave your scandalous lives, and obey the rules of your order, so you may recover the respect of mankind, and be obeyed and loved as before.'

When he found that the case was desperate; that his exhortations were but words addressed to the winds; that corruption had tainted the blood; that there was no hope except in revolution--as, indeed, in his heart he knew from the first that there was none--then his place ought to have been with Luther.

But Erasmus, as the tempest rose, could but stand still in feeble uncertainty. The responsibilities of his reputation weighed him down.

The Lutherans said, 'You believe as we do.' The Catholics said, 'You are a Lutheran at heart; if you are not, prove it by attacking Luther.'

He grew impatient. He told lies. He said he had not read Luther's books, and had no time to read them. What was he, he said, that he should meddle in such a quarrel. He was the vine and the fig tree of the Book of Judges. The trees said to them, Rule over us. The vine and the fig tree answered, they would not leave their sweetness for such a thankless office. 'I am a poor actor,' he said; 'I prefer to be a spectator of the play.'

But he was sore at heart, and bitter with disappointment. All had been going on so smoothly--literature was reviving, art and science were spreading, the mind of the world was being reformed in the best sense by the cla.s.sics of Greece and Rome, and now an apple of discord had been flung out into Europe.

The monks who had fought against enlightenment could point to the confusion as a fulfilment of their prophecies; and he, and all that he had done, was brought to disrepute.

To protect himself from the Dominicans, he was forced to pretend to an orthodoxy which he did not possess. Were all true which Luther had written, he pretended that it ought not to have been said, or should have been addressed in a learned language to the refined and educated.

He doubted whether it was not better on the whole to teach the people lies for their good, when truth was beyond their comprehension. Yet he could not for all that wish the Church to be successful.

'I fear for that miserable Luther,' he said; 'the popes and princes are furious with him. His own destruction would be no great matter, but if the monks triumph there will be no bearing them. They will never rest till they have rooted learning out of the land. The Pope expects _me_ to write against Luther. The orthodox, it appears, can call him names--call him blockhead, fool, heretic, toadstool, schismatic, and Antichrist--but they must come to me to answer his arguments.'

'Oh! that this had never been,' he wrote to our own Archbishop Warham.

'Now there is no hope for any good. It is all over with quiet learning, thought, piety, and progress; violence is on one side and folly on the other; and they accuse me of having caused it all. If I joined Luther I could only perish with him, and I do not mean to run my neck into a halter. Popes and emperors must decide matters. I will accept what is good, and do as I can with the rest. Peace on any terms is better than the justest war.'

Erasmus never stooped to real baseness. He was too clever, too genuine--he had too great a contempt for worldly greatness. They offered him a bishopric if he would attack Luther. He only laughed at them. What was a bishopric to him? He preferred a quiet life among his books at Louvaine.

But there was no more quiet for Erasmus at Louvaine or anywhere. Here is a scene between him and the Prior of the Dominicans in the presence of the Rector of the University.

The Dominican had preached at Erasmus in the University pulpit. Erasmus complained to the rector, and the rector invited the Dominican to defend himself. Erasmus tells the story.

'I sate on one side and the monk on the other, the rector between us to prevent our scratching.

'The monk asked what the matter was, and said he had done no harm.

'I said he had told lies of me, and that was harm.

'It was after dinner. The holy man was flushed. He turned purple.

'"Why do you abuse monks in your books?" he said.

'"I spoke of your order," I answered. "I did not mention you. You denounced me by name as a friend of Luther."

'He raged like a madman. "You are the cause of all this trouble," he said; "you are a chameleon, you can twist everything."

'"You see what a fellow he is," said I, turning to the rector. "If it comes to calling names, why I can do that too; but let us be reasonable."

'He still roared and cursed; he vowed he would never rest till he had destroyed Luther.

'I said he might curse Luther till he burst himself if he pleased. I complained of his cursing me.

'He answered, that if I did not agree with Luther, I ought to say so, and write against him.

'"Why should I?" urged I. "The quarrel is none of mine. Why should I irritate Luther against me, when he has horns and knows how to use them?"

'"Well, then," said he, "if you will not write, at least you can say that we Dominicans have had the best of the argument."

'"How can I do that?" replied I. "You have burnt his books, but I never heard that you had answered them."

'He almost spat upon me. I understand that there is to be a form of prayer for the conversion of Erasmus and Luther.'

But Erasmus was not to escape so easily. Adrian the Sixth, who succeeded Leo, was his old schoolfellow, and implored his a.s.sistance in terms which made refusal impossible. Adrian wanted Erasmus to come to him to Rome. He was too wary to walk into the wolf's den. But Adrian required him to write, and reluctantly he felt that he must comply.

What was he to say?

'If his Holiness will set about reform in good earnest,' he wrote to the Pope's secretary, 'and if he will not be too hard on Luther, I may, perhaps, do good; but what Luther writes of the tyranny, the corruption, the covetousness of the Roman court, would, my friend, that it was not true.'

To Adrian himself, Erasmus addressed a letter really remarkable.

'I cannot go to your Holiness,' he said, 'King Calculus will not let me.

I have dreadful health, which this tornado has not improved. I, who was the favourite of everybody, am now cursed by everybody--at Louvaine by the monks; in Germany by the Lutherans. I have fallen into trouble in my old age, like a mouse into a pot of pitch. You say, Come to Rome; you might as well say to the crab, Fly. The crab says, Give me wings; I say, Give me back my health and my youth. If I write calmly against Luther I shall be called lukewarm; if I write as he does, I shall stir a hornet's nest. People think he can be put down by force. The more force you try, the stronger he will grow. Such disorders cannot be cured in that way.

The Wickliffites in England were put down, but the fire smouldered.

'If you mean to use violence you have no need of me; but mark this--if monks and theologians think only of themselves, no good will come of it.

Look rather into the causes of all this confusion, and apply your remedies there. Send for the best and wisest men from all parts of Christendom and take their advice.'

Tell a crab to fly. Tell a pope to be reasonable. You must relieve him of his infallibility if you want him to act like a sensible man. Adrian could undertake no reforms, and still besought Erasmus to take arms for him.

Erasmus determined to gratify Adrian with least danger to himself and least injury to Luther.

'I remember Uzzah, and am afraid,' he said, in his quizzing way; 'it is not everyone who is allowed to uphold the ark. Many a wise man has attacked Luther, and what has been effected? The Pope curses, the emperor threatens; there are prisons, confiscations, f.a.ggots; and all is vain. What can a poor pigmy like me do?

'The world has been besotted with ceremonies. Miserable monks have ruled all, entangling men's consciences for their own benefit. Dogma has been heaped on dogma. The bishops have been tyrants, the Pope's commissaries have been rascals. Luther has been an instrument of G.o.d's displeasure, like Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar, or the Caesars, and I shall not attack him on such grounds as these.'

Erasmus was too acute to defend against Luther the weak point of a bad cause. He would not declare for him--but he would not go over to his enemies. Yet, unless he quarrelled with Adrian, he could not be absolutely silent; so he chose a subject to write upon on which all schools of theology, Catholic or Protestant--all philosophers, all thinkers of whatever kind, have been divided from the beginning of time: fate and free will, predestination and the liberty of man--a problem which has no solution--which may be argued even from eternity to eternity.

The reason of the selection was obvious. Erasmus wished to please the Pope and not exasperate Luther. Of course he pleased neither, and offended both.

Luther, who did not comprehend his motive, was needlessly angry. Adrian and the monks were openly contemptuous. Sick of them and their quarrels, he grew weary of the world, and began to wish to be well out of it.

It is characteristic of Erasmus that, like many highly-gifted men, but unlike all theologians, he expressed a hope for sudden death, and declared it to be one of the greatest blessings which a human creature can receive.

Do not suppose that he broke down or showed the white feather to fortune's buffets. Through all storms he stuck bravely to his own proper work; editing cla.s.sics, editing the Fathers, writing paraphrases--still doing for Europe what no other man could have done.

The Dominicans hunted him away from Louvaine. There was no living for him in Germany for the Protestants. He suffered dreadfully from the stone, too, and in all ways had a cruel time of it. Yet he continued, for all that, to make life endurable.

He moved about in Switzerland and on the Upper Rhine. The lakes, the mountains, the waterfalls, the villas on the hill slopes, delighted Erasmus when few people else cared for such things. He was particular about his wine. The vintage of Burgundy was as new blood in his veins, and quickened his pen into brightness and life.