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of honor and sincerity to the special functions of the Prince, whom he represents throughout as the servant of the people. While in England Erasmus began the systematic examination of manuscripts of the New Testament to prepare for a new edition and Latin translation. This edition was published by Froben of Basel in 1516 and was the basis of moat of the scientific study of the Bible during the Reformation period (see BIBLE TEXT, IL, 2, § 1). It was the first attempt on the part of a competent and liberal-minded scholar to ascertain what the writeraof the New Testament had actually said. Erasmus dedicated his work to Pope Leo X. as a patron of learning, to whom such an application of scholarship to religion must be welcome, and he justly regarded this work as his chief service to the cause of a sound Christianity. Immediately after he began the publication of his Paraphrases of the New Testament, a popular presentation of the contents of the several books. These, like all the writings of Erasmus, were in Latin, but they were at once translated into the common languages of the European peoples, a process which received the hearty approval of Erasmus himself.

The outbreak of the Lutheran movement in the year following the publication of the New Tes-

tament brought the severest test of g. Attitude Erasmus's personal and scholarly charToward acter. It made the issue between Eu-

the Refor- ropean society and the Roman Church mation. system so clear that no man could

quite escape the summons to range himself on one aide or the other of the great debate. Erasmus, at the height 'of his literary fame, was inevitably called upon to take sides, but partizanahip in any issue which he was not at liberty himself to define was foreign equally to his nature and his habits. In all his criticism of clerical follies and abuses he had always carefully hedged himself about with protests that he was not attacking church institutions themselves and had no enmity toward the persons of churchmen. The world had laughed at his satire, but only a few obstinate reactionaries had seriously interfered with his activities. He had a right to believe that his work so far lied commended itself to the best minds and also to the dominant powers in the religious world. There can be no doubt that Erasmus was in sympathy with the main points in the Lutheran criticism of the Church. For Luther personally he had and expressed the greatest respect, and Luther always spoke with admiration of his superior learning. Luther would have gone to great lengths in securing his cooperation in a work which seemed only the natural outcome of his own. When Erasmus hesitated or reused this seemed to the upright and downright Luther a mean avoidance of responsibility explicable only as cowardice or unsteadiness of purpose, and this has generally been the Protestant judgment of later days. On the other hand the Roman Catholic party was equally desirous of holding on to the services of a man who had so often declared his loyalty to the principles it was trying to maintain, and his half-heartednesa in declaring himself now brought upon him patmally the suspicion of disloyalty from this aide.

Recent judgments of Erasmus, however, have shown how consistent with all his previous practise his attitude toward the Reformation really was. The evils he had combated were either those of form, such as had long been a subject of derision by all sensible men, or they were evils of a kind that could be cured only by a long and slow regeneration in the moral and spiritual life of Europe. Get rid of the absurdities, restore learning to its rights, insist upon a sound practical piety, and all these evils would disappear: this was the programme of the " Erasmian Reformation." No one could question its soundness or its desirability. Its fatal lack was that it failed to offer any tangible method of applying these principles to the existing church system. This kind of reform had been tried long enough, and men were impatient of further delay. When Erasmus was charged-and very justly-with having " laid the egg that Luther hatched " he half admitted the truth of the charge, but said he had expected quite another kind of a bird.

In their early correspondence Luther expressed in unmeasured terms his admiration for all Erasmus had done in the cause of a sound and 6. Relations reasonable Christianity, and exhorted

with him now to put the seal upon his work Luther. by definitely casting in his lot with the Lutheran party. Erasmus replied with many expressions of regard, but declined to commit himself to any party attitude. His argument was that to do so would endanger his position as a- leader in the movement for pure scholarship which be regarded as his real work in life. Only through that position as an independent scholar could he hope to influence the reform of religion. The constructive value of Luther's work was mainly in furnishing a new doctrinal basis for the hitherto scattered attempts at reform. In reviving the half forgotten principle of the Augustinian theology Luther had furnished the needed impulse to that personal interest in religion which is the essence of Protestantism. Thin was precisely what Erasmus could not approve. He dreaded any change in the doctrine of the Church and believed that there was room enough within existing formulas for the kind of reform he valued moat. Twice in the course of the great discussion he allowed himself to enter the field of doctrinal controversy, a field foreign alike to his nature and his previous practise. One of the topics formally treated by him was the freedom of the will, the crucial point in the whole Augustinian system. In his De labero arbitrio W arpiRn sine collatio (1524), be analyzes with great cleverness and in perfect good temper the Lutheran exaggeration, as it seemed to him, of the obvious limitations upon human freedom. As his habit was, he lays down both aides of the argument and shows that each had its element of truth. His position was practically that which the Chinch had always taken in its dealing with the problem of sin: that Man was bound to sin, but that after ail he had a right to the forgiving mercy of God, if only he would seek this through the means offered him by the Church itself. It was an easy-going Semi-Pelagianism, humane in its practise, but opening the way to those very laxities and perversions which Eras.