suaded the rulers what they are trying to make them be- lieve. Finally, the rabid evangelicals would have been more bitter against me than they are, for I handled the subject very moderately. I have written nothing that I do not believe, though, to be sure, I will gladly desist if I shall be convinced that it is better to do so. Meanwhile, you say, I am put- ting it into the minds of the tyrants to use cruelty. I reply that no one ever discouraged cruelty more than I, and even if I had been heart and soul with the papal party, I should still have dissuaded them from cruelty, for that is the way the evil is spread. Julian* saw this and forbade the execu- tion of the Christians. The theologians believed that if they burned one or two men at Brussels, everybody would change his way of thinking; the death of those men made many Lutherans. But some of them are shouting that the Gospel is going to ruin, if anybody opposes their mad- ness; the Gospel is not given us that we may sin with im- punity, but that we may not sin, even though we might not be punished. . • •
634. ERASMUS TO DUKE GEORGE OF SAXONY. Gess, i, 734. Basle, September 6, 1524.
Greeting, most illustrious Prince. There have been two
special reasons, among many others, why I have not heretofore
obeyed the exhortations of your Highness : * in the first place,
I saw that, because of my age and my temperament,* I was not
suited to this dangerous business; then, too, because of the
remarkable sensitiveness of my nature, I abhor gladiatorial
combats like this, for what else are these pamphlets doing that
are flying around everywhere, except the same thing that is
done by gladiators in the arena ? In the second place, I thought
P Luther and his doctrine, such as it is, to be a sort of necessary
■ evil in the corrupt state of the Church, and although the
.' medicine was somewhat bitter and violent, I hoped that it
\
ing his letter to J. M. Glberti, Datary of Clement Yll, September 2, xsa4> Epistolae, I«ondon, 1642, xxi, 5.
^Julian "the Apostate/' Roman Emperor 361-363.
- I.e., to write against I«uther. Cf, supra nos. 555, 626.
- Ingenio.
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