Erasmus, however, was offending both parties.  A swarm of monks were already buzzing about him for the bold language of his Commentaries and Dialogues.  He was called Erasmus for his errors—­Arasmus because he would plough up sacred things—­Erasinus because he had written himself an ass—­Behemoth, Antichrist, and many other names of similar import.  Luther was said to have bought the deadly seed in his barn.  The egg had been laid by Erasmus, hatched by Luther.  On the other hand, he was reviled for not taking side manfully with the reformer.  The moderate man received much denunciation from zealots on either side.  He soon clears himself, however, from all suspicions of Lutheranism.  He is appalled at the fierce conflict which rages far and wide.  He becomes querulous as the mighty besom sweeps away sacred dust and consecrated cobwebs.  “Men should not attempt every thing at once,” he writes, “but rather step by step.  That which men can not improve they must look at through the fingers.  If the godlessness of mankind requires such fierce physicians as Luther, if man can not be healed with soothing ointments and cooling drinks, let us hope that God will comfort, as repentant, those whom he has punished as rebellious.  If the dove of Christ—­not the owl of Minerva—­would only fly to us, some measure might be put to the madness of mankind.”

Meantime the man, whose talk is not of doves and owls, the fierce physician, who deals not with ointments and cooling draughts, strides past the crowd of gentle quacks to smite the foul disease.  Devils, thicker than tiles on house-tops, scare him not from his work.  Bans and bulls, excommunications and decrees, are rained upon his head.  The paternal Emperor sends down dire edicts, thicker than hail upon the earth.  The Holy Father blasts and raves from Rome.  Louvain doctors denounce, Louvain hangmen burn, the bitter, blasphemous books.  The immoderate man stands firm in the storm, demanding argument instead of illogical thunder; shows the hangmen and the people too, outside the Elster gate at Wittenberg, that papal bulls will blaze as merrily as heretic scrolls.  What need of allusion to events which changed the world—­which every child has learned—­to the war of Titans, uprooting of hoary trees and rock-ribbed hills, to the Worms diet, Peasant wars, the Patmos of Eisenach, and huge wrestlings with the Devil?

Imperial edicts are soon employed to suppress the Reformation in the Netherlands by force.  The provinces, unfortunately; are the private property of Charles, his paternal inheritance; and most paternally, according to his view of the matter, does he deal with them.  Germany can not be treated thus summarily, not being his heritage.  “As it appears,” says the edict of 1521, “that the aforesaid Martin is not a man, but a devil under the form of a man, and clothed in the dress of a priest, the better to bring the human race to hell and damnation, therefore all his disciples and converts are to be punished