of their defeat. I shall try in
these pages to bring up into the light the principles and ideas which
they proclaimed to Europe, perhaps ahead of their time.

[1] In the South the movement showed a tendency to drift back into a
refined paganism. In the North, however, it was deeply Christian in
interest, in feeling, and in its moral aspirations. Erasmus was by far
the greatest figure and the most influential person in the group of
Humanists of this latter type.

[2] Epistle CCVII.

[3] Epistle DLXXXVII.

[4] 1401-1464.

[5] Nicholas belonged to one of these circles. "The Brethren of the
Common Life" are treated in my _Studies in Mystical Religion_, chap.
xiv.

[6] Letter to the Elector Frederick, March 5, 1522.

[7] The story that Luther, climbing the _Scala Santa_ in 1510, suddenly
was impressed by the words, "The just shall live by faith," is based on
a reminiscence of Luther's son Paul. Luther's own reference to the
ascent of the _Scala Santa_ makes no allusion to any such experience.
He merely says that when he reached the top of the stairs, which he
climbed in the hope of getting the soul of an ancestor out of
Purgatory, he thought to himself, "Who knows whether this prayer will
avail?" Luther began his lectures on _Romans_ in 1515, and his dynamic
experience probably belongs near this date.

[8] Preface to the _Magnificat_ written in 1521.

[9] First given as Lectures in 1516-17, and published in 1519.

[10] A _Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians_.

[11] Dilthey says in _Archiv fuer Geschichte der Philosophie_, Bd. v.
Heft 3, p. 358: "The Justification of which the medieval man had inward
experience was the descending stream of objective forces upon the
believer from the transcendental world, through the Incarnation, in the
channels of the ecclesiastical institutions, priestly consecration,
sacraments, confession, and works. It was something which took place
in connection with a super-sensible regime. The Justification by faith
of which Luther was inwardly aware was the personal experience of the
believer standing in the continuous line of Christian fellowship, by
whom assurance of the Grace of God is experienced in response to
personal faith, an experience derived from the appropriation of the
work of Christ."

[12] _Saemmtliche Werke_ (Erlangen edition), xxii. p. 20.

[13] On Christian Liberty, _Primary Works_, p. 106.

[14] See his Preface to _The Epistle to the Roman