f the altar he
holds fast to the Catholic view, but without fervour, only on the ground
of the Church's consensus, and because he cannot believe that Christ,
who is truth and love, would have suffered His bride to cling so long to
so horrid an error as to worship a crust of bread instead of Him. But
for these reasons he might, at need, accept Oecolampadius's view.

From the period at Basle dates one of the purest and most beneficent
moral treatises of Erasmus's, the _Institutio Christiani matrimonii_
(_On Christian Marriage_) of 1526, written for Catherine of Aragon,
Queen of England, quite in the spirit of the _Enchiridion_, save for a
certain diffuseness betraying old age. Later follows _De vidua
Christiana_, _The Christian Widow_, for Mary of Hungary, which is as
impeccable but less interesting.

All this did not disarm the defenders of the old Church. They held fast
to the clear picture of Erasmus's creed that arose from the _Colloquies_
and that could not be called purely Catholic. There it appeared only too
clearly that, however much Erasmus might desire to leave the letter
intact, his heart was not in the convictions which were vital to the
Catholic Church. Consequently the _Colloquies_ were later, when
Erasmus's works were expurgated, placed on the index in the lump, with
the _Moria_ and a few other works. The rest is _caute legenda_, to be
read with caution. Much was rejected of the Annotations to the New
Testament, of the _Paraphrases_ and the _Apologiae_, very little of the
_Enchiridion_, of the _Ratio verae theologiae_, and even of the
_Exomologesis_. But this was after the fight against the living Erasmus
had long been over.

So long as he remained at Basle, or elsewhere, as the centre of a large
intellectual group whose force could not be estimated, just because it
did not stand out as a party--it was not known what turn he might yet
take, what influence his mind might yet have on the Church. He remained
a king of minds in his quiet study. The hatred that was felt for him,
the watching of all his words and actions, were of a nature as only
falls to the lot of the acknowledged great. The chorus of enemies who
laid the fault of the whole Reformation on Erasmus was not silenced. 'He
laid the eggs which Luther and Zwingli have hatched.' With vexation
Erasmus quoted ever new specimens of narrow-minded, malicious and stupid
controversy. At Constance there lived a doctor who had hung his portrait
on the wall m