w
that in this Church, which you call the Papist Church, there are many
who displease me, but such I also see in your Church. One bears more
easily the evils to which one is accustomed. Therefore I bear with this
Church, until I shall see a better, and it cannot help bearing with me,
until I shall myself be better. And he does not sail badly who steers a
middle course between two several evils.'

But was it possible to keep to that course? On either side people turned
away from him. 'I who, formerly, in countless letters was addressed as
thrice great hero, Prince of letters, Sun of studies, Maintainer of true
theology, am now ignored, or represented in quite different colours,' he
writes. How many of his old friends and congenial spirits had already
gone!

A sufficient number remained, however, who thought and hoped as Erasmus
did. His untiring pen still continued to propagate, especially by means
of his letters, the moderating and purifying influence of his mind
throughout all the countries of Europe. Scholars, high church
dignitaries, nobles, students, and civil magistrates were his
correspondents. The Bishop of Basle himself, Christopher of Utenheim,
was a man after Erasmus's heart. A zealous advocate of humanism, he had
attempted, as early as 1503, to reform the clergy of his bishopric by
means of synodal statutes, without much success; afterwards he had
called scholars like Oecolampadius, Capito and Wimpfeling to Basle. That
was before the great struggle began, which was soon to carry away
Oecolampadius and Capito much further than the Bishop of Basle or
Erasmus approved. In 1522 Erasmus addressed the bishop in a treatise _De
interdicto esu carnium_ (_On the Prohibition of eating Meat_). This was
one of the last occasions on which he directly opposed the established
order.

The bishop, however, could no longer control the movement. A
considerable number of the commonalty of Basle and the majority of the
council, were already on the side of radical Reformation. About a year
after Erasmus, Johannes Oecolampadius, whose first residence at Basle
had also coincided with his (at that time he had helped Erasmus with
Hebrew for the edition of the New Testament), returned to the town with
the intention of organizing the resistance to the old order there. In
1523 the council appointed him professor of Holy Scripture in the
University; at the same time four Catholic professors lost their places.
He succeeded in obtaining