ication of the pamphlets of 1520 and of
the bull condemning the heretic, this position became untenable.
Erasmus had so far compromised himself in the eyes of the inquisitors
that he fled from Louvain in the autumn of 1521, and settled in Basle.
He was strongly urged by both parties to come out on one side or the
other, and he was openly taunted by Ulrich von Hutten, a hot Lutheran,
for cowardice in not doing so. Alienated by this and by the dogmatism
and intolerance of Luther's writings, Erasmus finally defined his
position in a _Diatribe on Free Will_. [Sidenote: 1524] As Luther's
theory of the bondage of the will was but the other side of his
doctrine of justification by faith only--for where God's grace does all
there is nothing left for human effort--Erasmus attacked the very
center of the Evangelical dogmatic system. The question, a deep
psychological and metaphysical one, was much in the air, Valla having
written on it a work published in 1518, and Pomponazzi having also
composed a work on it in 1520, which was, however, not published until
much later. It is noticeable that Erasmus selected this point rather
than one of the practical reforms advocated at Wittenberg, with which
he was much in sympathy. Luther replied in a volume on _The Bondage of
the Will_ reasserting his position more strongly than ever. [Sidenote:
1525] How theological, rather than philosophical, his opinion was may
be seen from the fact that while he admitted that a man was free to
choose which of two indifferent alternatives he should take, he denied
that any of these choices could work salvation or real righteousness in
God's eyes. He did not hesitate to say that God saved and damned souls
irrespective of merit. Erasmus answered again in a large work, the
_Hyperaspistes_ (_Heavy-Armed Soldier_), which came {106} out in two
parts. [Sidenote: 1526-7] In this he offers a general critique of the
Lutheran movement. Its leader, he says, is a dogmatist, who never
recoils from extremes logically demanded by his premises, no matter how
repugnant they may be to the heart of man. But for himself he is a
humanist, finding truth in the reason as well as in the Bible, and
abhorring paradoxes.

The controversy was not allowed to drop at this point. Many a barbed
shaft of wit-winged sarcasm was shot by the light-armed scholar against
the ranks of the Reformers. "Where Lutheranism reigns," he wrote
Pirckheimer, "sound learning perishes." "Wi