Bursen, and it is morally certain that Hübmaier was a member of this body. It was the general custom of the universities of that day to give much attention to disputation, as a means of fixing acquirements in memory and making one's entire mental resources instantly responsive to any demand. So great a master of dialectics, so eager a disputant as Eck proved himself to be during his whole life, would certainly magnify this part of his work as a teacher. From many sources we learn that his students were constantly exercised in debating disputed questions in theology, and such exercises were more than grateful to Hübmaier. Here he imbibed that ardent love of religious controversy which all his life was quite as characteristic of him as love of the truth. All his writings show that he revelled in discussion for its own sake, though also without doubt as a means of eliciting truth.
It was in 1511, apparently, that Hübmaier received the master's degree, of which Eck makes mention in the words already quoted. According to the customs of the time, this degree in itself gave him the right to teach, but he seems in addition to have received a formal recognition as a
