with civil life. But the bond of
a common enemy was the only real tie between the humanist and the
protestant; their alliance was bound to be of short duration, and,
sooner or later, to be replaced by internecine warfare. The goal of
the humanists, whether they were aware of it or not, was the
attainment of the complete intellectual freedom of the antique
philosopher, than which nothing could be more abhorrent to a Luther, a
Calvin, a Beza, or a Zwingli.

The key to the comprehension of the conduct of Erasmus, seems to me to
lie in the clear apprehension of this fact. That he was a man of many
weaknesses may be true; in fact, he was quite aware of them and
professed himself no hero. But he never deserted that reformatory
movement which he originally contemplated; and it was impossible he
should have deserted the specifically Protestant reformation in which
he never took part. He was essentially a theological whig, to whom
radicalism was as hateful as it is to all whigs; or, to borrow a still
more appropriate comparison from modern times, a broad churchman who
refused to enlist with either the High Church or the Low Church
zealots, and paid the penalty of being called coward, time-server and
traitor, by both. Yet really there is a good deal in his pathetic
remonstrance that he does not see why he is bound to become a martyr
for that in which he does not believe; and a fair consideration of the
circumstances and the consequences of the Protestant reformation seems
to me to go a long way towards justifying the course he adopted.

Few men had better means of being acquainted with the condition of
Europe; none could be more competent to gauge the intellectual
shallowness and self-contradiction of the Protestant criticism of
Catholic doctrine; and to estimate, at its proper value, the fond
imagination that the waters let out by the Renascence would come to
rest amidst the blind alleys of the new ecclesiasticism. The bastard,
whilom poor student and monk, become the familiar of bishops and
princes, at home in all grades of society, could not fail to be aware
of the gravity of the social position, of the dangers imminent from
the profligacy and indifference of the ruling classes, no less than
from the anarchical tendencies of the people who groaned under their
oppression. The wanderer who had lived in Germany, in France, in
England, in Italy, and who counted many of the best and most
influential men in each country among his