and foresight in Church and State he helped the Reformation more than any other man then in power.  Had it not been for him perhaps Luther could not have succeeded.  But it was not in the nature of things for the noble Elector to give us such a Reformation as that led by his humble subject.  It is useless to speculate as to what the Reformation might have become in his hands; but it certainly could never have become what we rejoice to know it was, while the probabilities are that we would now be fighting the battles which Luther fought for us three and a half centuries ago.

REUCHLIN.

Reuchlin was a learned and able man, and deeply conscious of the need of reform.  When the Greek Argyrophylos heard him read and explain Thucydides, he exclaimed, “Greece has retired beyond the Alps.”  He was the first Hebrew scholar of Germany, and served to restore the Hebrew Scriptures to the knowledge of the Church.  He held that popes could err and be deceived.  He had no faith in human abnegations for reconciliation with God.  He saw no need for hierarchical mediations, and discredited the doctrine of Purgatory and masses for the dead.  He bravely defended the cause of learning against the ignorant monks, whom he hated and held up to merciless ridicule.  He was a brilliant and persuasive orator.  He was an associate and counselor of kings.  He gave Melanchthon to the Reformation, and did much to promote it.  Luther recognized in him a great light, of vast service to the Gospel in Germany.  But Reuchlin could never have accomplished the Reformation.  The vital principles of it were not sufficiently rooted 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.