Upon a rumour probably of his intention to attack the reformers from the press, Luther addressed him in a let ter, full of spirit, yet expressed with much apostolical dignity, in which lie reminds him of his weakness, and exhorts him to continue to be a spectator rather than an actor in the contest : " 'We saw the Lord had not confer red on you the discernment and resolution to join us, and openly expose those monsters ; therefore dared not ex act from you what greatly surpasseth your strength and capacity. We have even borne with your weakness, and honoured that portion of the gift of God which is in you." " On the other hand, my dear Erasmus, if you duly re flect on your own imbecility, you will abstain from these sharp and spiteful figures of rhetoric ; and if you cannot or will not defend our sentiments, you will let them alone, and treat of subjects which suit you better." In 1525, however, Erasmus commenced open hostilities, by pub lishing his Diatribe de libero Arbitrio, in which he merely opposes the opinions of Luther on Predestination ; a sub ject which he seems to have purposely selected, as it furnished the appearance of dissenting from the refor mer, while it was altogether unconnected with his more obnoxious tenets; and in the discussion of which, he was in fact led to controvert the sentiments of St Augustine and of Thomas Aquinas, as much as those of the Ger man divine. In a letter to Alelanethon, he makes an apo logy for this publication, alleging in his defence, that the calumnies of the ecclesiastics, who made him pass for a Lutheran, and the importunity of princes, whose authority lie could not disregard, had constrained him to write ; and intimating at the same time, as a farther proof of his general good will, that he had employed all his influence to prevent the exercise of cruelty towards the reformers. Luther replied in a treatise, entitled De servo Arbitrio, in which he appears greatly superior to his opponent in the knowledge of the subject, and the management of the argument ; but treats him throughout with very little courtesy, which, indeed; he had not much title to expect ; and assails him with a mingled volley of compliment and scorn, of commendation and invective. Erasmus renew ed the controvet sy, by publishing his Hyperaspistes, and the dispute was carried on with augmented and unjusti fiable acrimony on both sides. After the year 1523, Eras mus resided several years at Basle, a place to which he was much attached, and which his enemies used to call his city of refuge. Ile was made rector of the university, and being surrounded by friends in whom he could con ffcle, lie found himself more secure from injury among the reformed divines of that city, than among the Romish monks and ecclesiastics. But when the pretestants gain ed the ascendency in the revolution which took place there in 1529, he became apprehensive of being suspect ed as their coadjutor should lie continue among• them, and removed to Friburg. In the course of the year pre ceding his removal, he published two treatises in the form of dialogue ; one of which, the most learned of all his writings, discusses " the right pronunciation of the Greek and Latin languages ;" and in the other, entitled Cieeronianus, he rallies, with great ingenuity and spright liness, the servile followers of Cicero, who scrupled to employ any word or phrase which was not to be found in his works. This latter production drew upon him much odium from many of his learned contemporaries, whose sentiments lie controverted, or whose merits he had fail ed to praise, according to their expectations ; and parti cularly from Julius Scaliger, who published two orations against him so full of bitterness and scurrility, that his own friends expressed their dissatisfaction, and prevailed upon him, after the death of Erasmus, to do justice to his memory. As Erasmus advanced in life, he lost much of that openness and candour which had distinguished his early years ; and so anxious did he become to dis claim the cause of the reformers, that, besides dissem bling, he proceeded to contradict his most avowed sen timents. He had always professed his abhorrence of every thing like cruelty in the measures which were adopted for suppressing the principles of the Reforma tion; but, when some of the Protestants began to produce passages from his writings, which seemed to favour their cause, and particularly to deny the lawfulness of putting heretics to death, he was so fearful of being suspected by the persecuting princes of his day of condemning their barbarous doings, that he published a letter " against some who falsely call themselves Evangelics," in which he. maintains, with unusual acrimony, that there were certain heretics, who might lawfully be put to death, as guilty of blasphemy and sedition. These unworthy con
cessions on his part were duly appreciated by the court of Rome ; and, as he was now the declared defender of the church, it was resolved to prepare him for receiving a seat in the College of Cardinals ; but these rewards came too late, and his increasing infirmities obliged him to decline the preferments which were offered to him in that view. In 1535, he went to Basle, in order to super intend the printing of his Ecclesiastes, and in the hope of recovering his lost health ; but his strength continued rapidly to decline, and he died of a dysentery on the 12th day of July 1536, in the 69th year of his age. He was buried with great funeral pomp in the cathedral church of Basle, where his tomb still remains, and where his cabinet, containing his ring, seal, pencil, knife, sword, portrait, and the New Testament written by his own hand, is exhibited to strangers, as one of the greatest cu riosities in the city. His memory is equally honoured at Rotterdam, by an inscription upon the house in which he was born, and upon the college which bears his name ; and by a bronze statue in the great square. By his will, he left handsome legacies to several of his friends, and directed the remainder of his property to be applied to charitable purposes ; by which it appears that he was neither so straitened in his circumstances, nor so defective in economy, as he was accustomed to repre sent himself. He is said to have left more than 7000 du cats. Erasmus was rather of low stature, but well form ed, of a fair complexion, with grey eyes, a cheerful countenance, a low voice, and agreeable elocution. His bodily constitution was very infirm ; and, among other peculiarities, he was not able to endure even the smell of fish, which made it necessary for him to procure a dis pensation for using other food in Lent, and which gave him occasion to say of himself, that however friendly to the church in principle, he had a most Lutheran stomach.
He was always neat in his apparel, facetious in his dis position, and fond of a witty story, though directed against himself. He used to dine late, that he might have a long morning for study ; but after dinner, he con versed cheerfully with his friends on any subject, and delivered his opinions both on men and things with the greatest freedom. In his intellectual character, he was distinguished by a strong memory, extensive reading, a penetrating genius, and a lively imagination. Ile com posed with great facility, but disliked the task of revi sing his writings. His prose style in Latin, (the language to which he chiefly devoted his attention,) though not always classically pure, is uniformly unaffected, clear, and copious ; but his verses in that language, though sufficiently correct in point of prosody, and distinguised by good sense, discover little elegance of taste or poeti cal talent. He was constant and faithful to his friends, but too apt to trouble them with complaints against his adversaries ; and, though generous and charitable to those who were poorer than himself, he was not very delicate in soliciting and accepting pecuniary donations from his patrons. With all the allowances which can be fairly made for his prejudices of education, his love of peace, and his reluctance to offend his best friends, he cannot be acquitted of timidity, lukewarmness, dissimu lation, and a partial desertion of principle in the business of the Reformation ; but he spent a long life in opposing ignorance and superstition, and promoting the interests of sound literature and true piety ; and, with all his fail ings, he must unquestionably be regarded as one of the principal ornaments of the age in which he lived. His works, which were very voluminous, consist of transla tions from the Greek ; grammatical and philological dis sertations; various treatises on moral and religious to pics; a version of the New Testament ; paraphrases and commentaries on several parts of sacred scripture ; apo logies, epistles, declamations, orations, poems, adages, apophthegms, editions of celebrated authors, Ste. His paraphrases were the most favourably received of his theological productions ; and his colloquies, and Praise of Folly, have been the most frequently printed of all his writings. The best and most elegant edition of his works is that published in Holland by Le Clerc, in eleven vo lumes folio, 1703. See Jortin's Life of Erasnzus; Bayle's Dictionary ; General Biogralzhical Dictionary ; Robert son's History of Charles V . vol. ii. p. 156 ; Le Clerc's Bibl. Univ. torn. viii. p. 215 ; Milner's Church Hist. vol. iv. App. p. xvi. and pp. 845, 943, 1060. (q)