Part 20 (1/2)

It is not incongruous to wish continued spiritual health to the ives us physical health I wonder how you know nize how very true are your dark sayings, not by the art of medicine, which I have never learned, but froion of the liver in the past, and could not divine the source of the trouble I have seen the fat froo Your third point[101] I do not quite understand, nevertheless it appears to be convincing

As I told you, I have no time for the next few days to be doctored, or to be ill, or to die, so overwhel which can alleviate the trouble without weakening the body, I beg you to inforth your very concise and more than laconic notes, and prescribe other remedies which I can take until I am free, I cannot promise you a fee to match your art or the trouble you have taken, but I do at least prorateful heart

You have resurrected Froben[102], that is, my other half: if you restoreeach of us singly May we have the good fortune to keep you in Basle!

I fear you may not be able to read this letter dashed off i yours] Farewell

Erasmus of Rotterdam, by his own hand

XIX TO MARTIN BUCER[103]

Basle, 11 Noves:

You plead the cause of Capito with some rhetorical skill; but I see that, eloquent advocate as you are otherwise, you are not sufficiently well equipped to undertake his defence Were I to advance my battle-line of conjectures and proofs, you would realize that you had to devise a different speech But I have had too ainst ht of Eppendorff[104] ventures or does not venture to do is his concern; only that he returns too frequently to this game I shall not involve Capito in the draain; let him not think me such a fool as not to knohat is in question But I have writtenyour own cause and that of your church, I think it better not to give any answer, because this thy oration, even if it were not a matter of controversy This is merely a brief answer on scattered points

The person who infores'[105] is one whose trustworthiness not even you would have esteehtly; and he thinks no ill of you Indeed I have never disliked you as far as concerns private feelings There are persons living in your toere chattering here about 'all the disciplines having been invented by Godforsaken wretches' Certainly persons of this description, whatever naiven thelected and co the City Treasury has hired lecturers, but there is no one to attend their lectures

You assemble a number of conjectures as to why I have not joined your church But you must know that the first and most important of all the reasons which withheldmyself with it was my conscience: if my conscience could have been persuaded that thissince a soldier in your caroup who are strangers to all Evangelical soundness I s learned fros experienced not merely from the mob, but frome of what I know not: the world is wide I know some as excellent men before they became devotees of your faith, what they are now like I do not know: at all events I have learned that several of thee which deterred me is the intense discord between the leaders of the movement Not to mention the Prophets and the Anabaptists, what eainst each other! I have never approved the ferocity of the leaders, but it is provoked by the behaviour of certain persons; when they ought to haveconduct, if you really had what you boast of Not to speak of the others, of what use was it for Luther to indulge in buffoonery in that fashi+on against the King of England, when he had undertaken a task so arduous with the general approval? Was he not reflecting as to the role he was sustaining? Did he not realize that the whole world had its eyes turned on him alone? And this is the chief of thisme so scurrilously: but his betrayal of the cause of the Gospel, his letting loose princes, bishops, pseudo- made doubly hard our slavery, which is already intolerable--that is what tortures my mind And I seem to see a cruel and bloody century ahead, if the provoked section gets its breath again, which it is certainly now doing You will say that there is no croithout an admixture of wicked men Certainly it was the duty of the principal men to exercise special care interms with liars, perjurors, drunkards and fornicators As it is I hear and als are far otherwise If the husband had found his wife istrate the citizen more tractable, the employer his workman more trustworthy, the buyer the seller less deceitful, it would have been great recos are, the behaviour of certain persons has had the effect of cooling the zeal of those who at first, owing to their love of piety and abhorrence of Pharisaism, looked with favour on thisup in its wake itives, bankrupts, naked, wretched and for the , even those who in the beginning had been hopeful

It is not without deep sorrow that I speak of all this, not only because I foresee that a business wrongly handled will go from bad to worse, but also because at last I shall myself have to suffer for it Certain rascals say that s are to blaians andless esteelected, and that the suprearded; when it is quite dear fro too tight the rope which is now breaking They almost set the Pope's authority above Christ's, they htened the hold of the confession to an enormous extent, while theopen tyranny As a result 'the stretched string snapped', as the proverb has it; it could not be otherwise But I sorely fear that the same will happen one day to the princes, if they too continue to stretch _their_ rope too tightly

Again, the other side having commenced the action of their dra was possible May we not live to see worse horrors!

However it was the duty of the leaders of this oal, to refrain not only from vice, but even frohtest stu even practices which, although allowed, are yet not expedient Above all they should have guarded against all sedition If they had handled the matter with sincerity and moderation, they would have won the support of the princes and bishops: for they have not all been given up for lost And they should not have heedlessly wrecked anything without having so better ready to put in its place As it is, those who have abandoned the Hours do not pray at all

Many who have put off pharisaical clothing are worse in other matters than they were before Those who disdain the episcopal regulations do not even obey the coard the careful choice of foods indulge in greed and gluttony It is a long-drawn-out tragedy, which every day we partly hear ourselves and partly learn of from others I never approved of the abolition of the Mass, even though I have always disliked these s also which could have been altered without causing riots As things are, certain persons are not satisfied with any of the accepted practices; as if a neorld could be built of a sudden There will always be things which the pious ht to be abolished because many misuse it, then the Sermon should be abolished also, which is almost the only custom accepted by your party I feel the saes

Your letter de, with all that I have to do I a the Word of the Gospel, and that you conduct yourself more courteously than do ood sense you would strive to the end that this h firrity of conduct be brought to a conclusion worthy of the Gospel To this end I shall help you to the best of h the host of ians assail ly to cast away ood sense not to circulate this letter, lest it cause any disturbance We would have more discussions if we could meet Farewell I had no time to read this over

Erasmus of Rotterdam, by my own hand

[Illustration: xxxI ERASMUS AT THE AGE OF 60]

XX TO ALFONSO VALDES[106]

Basle, 1 August 1528

To the most illustrious Alfonso Valdes, Secretary to His Is:

I have learned very plainly from other men's letters what you indicate very discreetly, as is your way--that there are so, an occasion for slander, protesting that the addition of the device _Concedo nulli_ [I yield to none] shows intolerable arrogance What is this but so? Mo Venus's slipper; but theseto carp at in a ring I would have called _the but what he has first carefully inspected These fault-finders, or rather false accusers, criticize with their eyes shut what they neither see nor understand: so violent is the disease And meanwhile they think themselves pillars of the Church, whereas all they do is to expose their stupidity combined with a malice no less extreme, when they are alreadyif they think it is Erass they would see that there is none so hu more liable to yield to all than to none

[Illustration: xxxII ERASMUS'S DEVICE]

Now those who know me intimately from close association will attribute any vice to e that I am closer to the Socratic utterance, 'This alone I know, that I know nothing,' than to this, 'I yield to none' But if they iine that I have so insolent a mind as to put myself before all others, do they also think me such a fool as to profess this in a device? If they had any Christian feeling they would understand those words either as notThey see there a sculptured figure, in its lower part a stone, in its upper part a youth with flying hair Does this look like Erash, they see written on the stone itself _Terminus_: if one takes this as the last word, that will make an iains with this word, it will be a trochaic dimeter acatalectic, _Terminus concedo nulli_ What if I had painted a lion and added as a device 'Flee, unless you prefer to be torn to pieces'? Would they attribute these words tonow is just as foolish; for if I mistake not, I aue, 'We did not notice that it was verse, and we know nothing about Terminus' Is it then to be a crime henceforward to have written verse, because _they_ have not learned the theory of metre? At least, as they knew that in devices of this kind one actually aiuessing powers of those who look at theh they could have learned of hiustine or Ambrose--they should have inquired of experts in this kind of matter In forn This was a stone projecting above the earth, which the laws of the ancients ordered never to be s the Platonic utterance, 'Remove not what thou hast not planted' The laas reinforced by a religious awe, the better to deter the ignorantit believe that to violate the stone was to violate a God in it, whom the Romans call Terminus, and to him there was also dedicated a shrine and a festival, the Terminalia This God Ter to yield to Jupiter because 'while the birds allowed the deconsecration of all the other sanctuaries, in the shrine of Terminus alone they were unpropitious'[109] Livy tells this story in the first book of his _History_, and again in Book 5 he narrates hohen after the taking of auguries the Capitol was being cleared, Juventas [Youth] and Terminus would not allow themselves to be , for they believed that it portended an eternal empire The _youth_ is useful for war, and _Terminus_ is fixed