assuredness so inseparably bound up
with the reformers. 'Zwingli and Bucer may be inspired by the Spirit,
Erasmus from himself is nothing but a man and cannot comprehend what is
of the Spirit.'

There was a group among the reformed to whom Erasmus in his heart of
hearts was more nearly akin than to the Lutherans or Zwinglians with
their rigid dogmatism: the Anabaptists. He rejected the doctrine from
which they derived their name, and abhorred the anarchic element in
them. He remained far too much the man of spiritual decorum to identify
himself with these irregular believers. But he was not blind to the
sincerity of their moral aspirations and sympathized with their dislike
of brute force and the patience with which they bore persecution. 'They
are praised more than all others for the innocence of their life,' he
writes in 1529. Just in the last part of his life came the episode of
the violent revolutionary proceedings of the fanatic Anabaptists; it
goes without saying that Erasmus speaks of it only with horror.

One of the best historians of the Reformation, Walter Koehler, calls
Erasmus one of the spiritual fathers of Anabaptism. And certain it is
that in its later, peaceful development it has important traits in
common with Erasmus: a tendency to acknowledge free will, a certain
rationalistic trend, a dislike of an exclusive conception of a Church.
It seems possible to prove that the South German Anabaptist Hans Denk
derived opinions directly from Erasmus. For a considerable part,
however, this community of ideas must, no doubt, have been based on
peculiarities of religious consciousness in the Netherlands, whence
Erasmus sprang, and where Anabaptism found such a receptive soil.
Erasmus was certainly never aware of these connections.

Some remarkable evidence regarding Erasmus's altered attitude towards
the old and the new Church is shown by what follows.

The reproach he had formerly so often flung at the advocates of
conservatism that they hated the _bonae literae_, so dear to him, and
wanted to stifle them, he now uses against the evangelical party.
'Wherever Lutherism is dominant the study of literature is extinguished.
Why else,' he continues, using a remarkable sophism, 'are Luther and
Melanchthon compelled to call back the people so urgently to the love of
letters?' 'Just compare the University of Wittenberg with that of
Louvain or Paris!... Printers say that before this Gospel came they used
to dispose of