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 their advice.”—­“Reduce the dogmas necessary to be believed to the smallest possible number.  On other points let every one believe as he likes.  Having done this, quietly correct the abuses of which the world justly complains.”

So wrote Erasmus to the pope and to the archbishop of Mayence.  Such was his ideal of reformation—­a thing as impossible to bring into practical effect as its realization would have been absurd.  It is easy to tell a crab to fly, but will he do it?  As well propose to convert infallibility with a fable of AEsop as to count on bringing regeneration to the hierarchy by such counsels.

The waters were too deep and the storms too fierce for the vacillating Erasmus.  He did some excellent service in his way, but all his counsels and ideas failed, as they deserved.  Once the idol of Europe, he died a defeated, crushed, and miserable man.  “Hercules could not fight two monsters at once,” said he, “while I, poor wretch! have lions, cerberuses, cancers, scorpions, every day at my sword’s point....  There is no rest for me in my age, unless I join Luther; and that I cannot, for I cannot accept his doctrines.  Sometimes I am stung with desire to avenge my wrongs; but my heart says, Will you in your spleen raise hand against your mother who begot you at the font?  I cannot do it.  Yet, because I bade monks remember their vows; because I told persons to leave off their wranglings and read the Bible; because I told popes and cardinals to look to the apostles and be more like them,—­the theologians say I am their enemy.”

Thus in sorrow and in clouds Erasmus passed away, as would the entire Reformation in his hands.

ULRIC VON HUeTTEN.

Ulric von Huetten, soldier and knight, equally distinguished in letters and in arms, and called the Demosthenes of Germany, was a zealous friend of reform.  He had been in Rome, and sharpened his darts from what he there saw to hurl them with effect.  All the powers of satire and ridicule he brought to bear upon the pillars of the Papacy.  He helped to shake the edifice, and his plans and spirit might have served to pull it down had he been able to bring Europe to his mind; but it would only have been to bury society in its ruins.

ULRICH ZWINGLI.

Ulrich Zwingli is ranked among Reformers, and he was energetic in behalf of reform.  But he fell a victim to his own mistakes, and with him would have perished the Reformation also had it depended upon him.  Even had he lived, his radical and rationalistic spirit, his narrow and fiery patriotism, his shallow religious experience, and his eagerness to rest the cause of Reformation on civil authority and the sword, would have wrecked it with nine-tenths of the European peoples.