60a LUTHER TO CONRAD PELLICAN. Enders, iv, 233, Wittenbeeg, October i, 1523.
This letter was promptly published in a work entitled Indicium Erasmi Albert de Spongia Erasmi Roterodami. The reason Luther selected Pellican as the recipient of this missive is that Pellican had written an introduction to Caspar Schatzgeyer's Scrutinium divinae scripturae pro concUiatione dissentium dogtnatum. This irenic attempt to show that Lutherans and Catholics might well agree, was in reality written in large part by Erasmus. (K. Zickendraht in ZKG., xxix, 22, 1908). Luther judged it a foolish attempt to reconcile God and Belial, the Bible and the schoolmen. Enders, iv, I03ff.
The name of the person addressed had been removed and the letter N" substituted. Aurifaber mistook this to mean Nicholas" and made Nicholas Hausmann the recipient He was followed by later editors, but znde Enders, iv, 236, n. i.
Grace and peace in the Lord. Do you rather pray for me, my dear Conrad/ for you have been granted more leisure than I and surpass me in piety. I hope and pray to the Lord Jesus that He may grant you the gift of tongues, which you seek, to the praise of his Grace.
Your request that I should not be irritated by Erasmus was granted before you made it. I wish that Hutten had not ex- postulated, and still more that Erasmus had not wiped his expostulation out.' If that is wiping out with a sponge, what, pray, is malediction and abuse? Erasmus hopes in vain to abuse all men of parts with his rhetoric, as though there were no one, or, rather, as though there were but few, who perceived what Erasmus is after. If Erasmus writes thus in his own defence, it would be a good thing if he would write against himself. For in this book he makes incredible boasts about his reputation and authority, and I really pity the man be- cause he never gets to his subject, and raves so, this second time, against the vices of his friends, though he was so gentle with his enemy Lee;' moreover he himself elsewhere dis-
» Text, "N."
'Angered at the treatment he had received from Erasmus in Basle, Hutten had published (June, 1523) an attack upon him, under the title, An Expostulation with Erasmus of Rotterdam (Bocking ii, s6sff). Erasmus had replied (August, 15^3) with A Spongg Against the Aspersions of Hutten (Bocking ii, 325)1 • bitter in- vective against Hutten. Cf, Emerton, Erasmus, 355^* In the Sponge, Erasmus also attacked Luther. Melanchthon expressed a harsh judgment of Hutten in a letter to Oecolampadius of September 23. Zwingliana, 1911* P« 45o*
- Edward Lee (? 1482-1544), made Archbishop of York 1531, who had critidied
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