ast, the Scottish prelates had no
reason to be ashamed of the champion who had volunteered his services in
their cause. Nor were they wanting in those more substantial expressions
of their satisfaction which Cochlaeus, like most of the
controversialists of his time, evidently coveted. The Archbishops of St
Andrews and Glasgow testified their gratitude for his services by
sending him liberal presents. The king wrote him a letter, a
contemporary transcript of which is still extant, and also, as is stated
by Cochlaeus himself in a letter to a Polish archbishop, sent him some
more material tokens of his regard.[304] And even the messenger who had
brought over the copies of his first epistle received, as it now
appears, a present of fifty pounds Scots.[305] Alesius, though in quite
another way, did not lack his reward, and it came in the way which he
valued most--the treatises he had written, to a certain extent at least,
got into circulation both in Scotland and in England. They cheered the
hearts of the faithful under all the terrible trials to which they were
subjected in the later years of James's reign, when he seems to have
abandoned his former kindliness, and surrendered himself in a great
measure to the priests and to vicious indulgences. They carried
conviction to the minds of many, and gradually ripened opinion to
demand the right to do publicly what many had learned to do secretly--to
study the Word of God, and especially the New Testament, in their native
tongue. This right was authorised by an Act of the Scottish Parliament
passed in 1543,[306] when Cardinal Betoun was in disgrace, and the
Archbishop of Glasgow was left alone to protest against it. This Act was
the first real victory of the reformed party in Scotland, and it was
mainly due to the able and temperate pleading of Alesius that this great
boon, or indeed I may say this indefeasible right of Christian laymen,
was granted. The same subject had been reverted to by him in his more
elaborate treatise, De authoritate Verbi Dei, which was published in
1542 in Latin, and some time after was translated into English.[307]

[Sidenote: Erasmus intervenes.]

One other episode in this controversy remains still to be adverted to.
This is the intervention of the great humanist, Erasmus,--an incident in
his history on which his biographers with one consent have observed a
judicious silence. Nevertheless, the fact is as undoubted as melancholy
that he--who had done s