Erasmus on Luther

Erasmus and Luther eventually squared off regarding the freedom of the will, but in earlier letters Erasmus cautions against judging Luther too hastily or harshly and pushes the burden of proof on Luther’s opponents. Erasmus was, after all, a reforming Catholic.

For instance: “I do not suppose myself learned enough to pronounce on another man’s faith, nor do I claim sufficient authority to be willing to do so, . . . nor am I sufficiently deranged to be ready to approve or disapprove in a field so fraught with ill will, without carefully reading and rereading all [Luther’s] books, as they say, from cover to cover. A hasty verdict is always condemned, and specially so when it points to a man’s destruction.”

Again, though faulting Luther for harshness and lack of gentleness, he wrote: “I seemed [in Luther’s writings] to detect rare natural gifts and a nature finely adapted to expound the mysteries of Scripture in the classical manner and blow the spark of gospel teaching into flame . . . . I perceived that the higher a person’s character and the nearer he came to the simplicity of the Gospel, the less opposed he was to Luther . . . . In these terms then I thought well of Luther; I thought well of the good things which I either saw in him or thought I saw; in fact, it was not of him I thought, but the glory of Christ.”