e succeeded, after all the
troubles of travel and all my studious exertions, in standing up to all
these physical ills as well? You know how ill I was not long ago at
Basle, more than once. I was beginning to suspect that that year would
be fatal to me: illness followed illness, always more severe. But, at
the very time when this illness was at its height, I felt no torturing
desire to live and no trepidation at the fear of death. My whole hope
was in Christ alone, and I prayed only that he would give me what he
judged most salutary for me. In my youth long ago, as I remember, I
would shiver at the very name of death. This at least I have achieved as
I have grown older, that I do not greatly fear death, and I do not
measure man's happiness by number of days. I have passed my fiftieth
year; as so few out of so many reach this age, I cannot rightly complain
that I have not lived long enough. And then, if this has any relevance,
I have by now already prepared a monument to bear witness to posterity
that I have lived. And perhaps if, as the poets tell, jealousy falls
silent after death, fame will shine out the more brightly: although it
ill becomes a Christian heart to be moved by human glory; may I have the
glory of pleasing Christ! Farewell, my dearest Beatus. The rest you will
learn from my letter to Capito.

XIV. TO MARTIN LUTHER

Louvain, 30 May 1519

Best greetings, most beloved brother in Christ. Your letter was most
welcome to me, displaying a shrewd wit and breathing a Christian spirit.

I could never find words to express what commotions your books have
brought about here. They cannot even now eradicate from their minds the
most false suspicion that your works were composed with my aid, and that
I am the standard-bearer of this party, as they call it. They thought
that they had found a handle wherewith to crush good learning--which
they mortally detest as threatening to dim the majesty of theology, a
thing they value far above Christ--and at the same time to crush me,
whom they consider as having some influence on the revival of studies.
The whole affair was conducted with such clamourings, wild talk,
trickery, detraction and cunning that, had I not been present and
witnessed, nay, _felt_ all this, I should never have taken any man's
word for it that theologians could act so madly. You would have thought
it some mortal plague. And yet the poison of this evil beginning with a
few has spread so far abroad that