eflecting as to the role
he was sustaining? Did he not realize that the whole world had its eyes
turned on him alone? And this is the chief of this movement; I am not
particularly angry with him for treating me so scurrilously: but his
betrayal of the cause of the Gospel, his letting loose princes, bishops,
pseudo-monks and pseudo-theologians against good men, his having made
doubly hard our slavery, which is already intolerable--that is what
tortures my mind. And I seem to see a cruel and bloody century ahead, if
the provoked section gets its breath again, which it is certainly now
doing. You will say that there is no crowd without an admixture of
wicked men. Certainly it was the duty of the principal men to exercise
special care in matters of conduct, and not be even on speaking terms
with liars, perjurors, drunkards and fornicators. As it is I hear and
almost _see_, that things are far otherwise. If the husband had found
his wife more amenable, the teacher his pupil more obedient, the
magistrate the citizen more tractable, the employer his workman more
trustworthy, the buyer the seller less deceitful, it would have been
great recommendation for the Gospels. As things are, the behaviour of
certain persons has had the effect of cooling the zeal of those who at
first, owing to their love of piety and abhorrence of Pharisaism, looked
with favour on this movement; and the princes, seeing a disorderly host
springing up in its wake made up of vagabonds, fugitives, bankrupts,
naked, wretched and for the most part even wicked men, are cursing, even
those who in the beginning had been hopeful.

It is not without deep sorrow that I speak of all this, not only because
I foresee that a business wrongly handled will go from bad to worse, but
also because at last I shall myself have to suffer for it. Certain
rascals say that my writings are to blame for the fact that the
scholastic theologians and monks are in several places becoming less
esteemed than they would like, that ceremonies are neglected, and that
the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff is disregarded; when it is quite dear
from what source this evil has sprung. They were stretching too tight
the rope which is now breaking. They almost set the Pope's authority
above Christ's, they measured all piety by ceremonies, and tightened the
hold of the confession to an enormous extent, while the monks lorded it
without fear of punishment, by now meditating open tyranny. As a result
't