ng to justify himself in the eyes of the world, but also by the
custom of his time, so eager for dispute.

There were, first of all, his polemics with Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples,
or in Latinized form, Faber Stapulensis, the Parisian theologian, who as
a preparer of the Reformation may, more than anyone else, be ranked with
Erasmus. At the moment when Erasmus got into the travelling cart which
was to take him to Louvain, a friend drew his attention to a passage in
the new edition of Faber's commentary on St. Paul's epistles, in which
he controverted Erasmus's note on the Second Epistle to the Hebrews,
verse 7. Erasmus at once bought Faber's book, and soon published an
_Apologia_. It concerned Christ's relation to God and the angels, but
the dogmatic point at issue hinged, after all, on a philological
interpretation of Erasmus.

Not yet accustomed to much direct wrangling, Erasmus was violently
agitated by the matter, the more as he esteemed Faber highly and
considered him a congenial spirit. 'What on earth has occurred to the
man? Have others set him on against me? All theologians agree that I am
right,' he asserts. It makes him nervous that Faber does not reply again
at once. Badius has told Peter Gilles that Faber is sorry about it.
Erasmus in a dignified letter appeals to their friendship; he will
suffer himself to be taught and censured. Then again he growls: Let him
be careful. And he thinks that his controversy with Faber keeps the
world in suspense: there is not a meal at which the guests do not side
with one or the other of them. But finally the combat abated and the
friendship was preserved.

Towards Easter 1518, Erasmus contemplated a new journey to Basle, there
to pass through the press, during a few months of hard labour, the
corrected edition of the New Testament. He did not fail to request the
chiefs of conservative divinity at Louvain beforehand to state their
objections to his work. Briard of Ath declared he had found nothing
offensive in it, after he had first been told all sorts of bad things
about it. 'Then the new edition will please you much better,' Erasmus
had said. His friend Dorp and James Latomus, also one of the chief
divines, had expressed themselves in the same sense, and the Carmelite
Nicholas of Egmond had said that he had never read Erasmus's work. Only
a young Englishman, Edward Lee, who was studying Greek at Louvain, had
summarized a number of criticisms into ten conclusions. Erasmus ha