letters what presents he was getting—crowns, and pieces of silver-plate; yet his income was somewhat precarious, and he seems to have sent out his secretary occasionally on what might be almost called a begging excursion. His correspondence was immense, as his remaining epistles to all classes of persons and upon all subjects, abundantly testify. All these extraordinary labours pioneered or helped on the cause of protestantism, which was identical with the emancipation of northern Europe. The contemporaries of Erasmus used to say, that he laid the egg and Luther hatched it. The power of the press aided in no small degree the progress of the new faith, and the study of the classics and the Fathers helped to take off the stone from the well's mouth, that all nations might have access to the living stream.
And yet with all his merits as a scholar of varied erudition and pungent humour, and a reformer who sneered at dominant follies, and oftener laughed at them as weaknesses than scourged them as sins, he must be accused not of a want of sincerity, but of want of decision and singleness of aim. That Luther and he should not have agreed is not wonderful, for they were men of very opposite temperaments. Nor do we wonder that he should have been exasperated at Luther, who at first had all but fawned upon him as a "brother in Christ," and then in the bitterness of disappointment attacked and vilified him. Still, the great crisis was claiming co-operation, whatever faults might belong to the great agitator. But in vain did restless and expectant thousands turn for sympathy and encouragement to Erasmus. He liked fame, but disliked to suffer. He would not commit himself heart and soul to a cause, if life or liberty was put to risk. His passionless mind would state its preferences, but shrink from a cordial embodiment of them in action. His opinions did not deepen into convictions; he was a stranger to such impulses and beliefs as make a man a martyr. He never manifested a thorough and unselfish identification with the cause of religious truth and liberty, nay, was so timid as to imagine that his going to the diet at Augsburg might endanger his life. He was content with being a spectator, and coldly drew back from being an actor. One of the most venturesome things he did was writing at Rome his "Querela Pacis," under the pontificate of the warlike Julius II. No one lashed the monks more severely or constantly than he, yet he satirized the marriages of the reformers. "Œcolampadius has taken a pretty wife; he means, I suppose, to mortify the flesh. Some call Lutheranism a tragedy, I call it a comedy, when the distress usually ends in a marriage." Nay, he seems for a while to have believed that Luther's first child was baptized within a few days of his marriage, and he did not think it quite improbable that antichrist might be the offspring of an unfrocked monk and a renegade nun.—Ep. xviii. 22. Anxious for free and open preaching, he yet says—"I abhor the evangelicals; we have been long enough stunned with the cry of gospel." He clung to the dogma of transubstantiation, but would have believed certain reformed doctrines, if they had not wanted the consent of the church, and yet in his "Inquisition concerning faith," he asserts that belief in the apostle's creed is all that is requisite for salvation. While writing against Beda, "in whom were three thousand monks," and arguing against the crime of punishing religious opinion with death, he yet admits that certain forms of error may be visited with a capital sentence. Admitting the necessity of much that the reformers had done, he predicted that their party would soon be dissipated. Into the inner life of the Reformation he never penetrated, saying that Luther's great fault had been in attacking the crown of the pope and the belly of the monks. The spirit of compromise created such doubts about his true position that some swore by his orthodoxy, and some by his heresy; some held that he belonged to the church, and some Socinians claimed him as one of themselves. Perhaps the key to his character is found in these sentences—"Let others affect the glory of martyrdom, I do not think myself worthy of that honour. . . . . It was never my design to maintain truth at the danger of my life." But, apart from these weaknesses, Erasmus was one of the brightest phenomena of his age. His industry was unceasing, and his only passion was his love of literature. His Latinity was generally pure; indeed he used no language but Latin; French, Italian, English, and even the Dutch, his mother-tongue, were not understood by him. His wit was refined and incessant, and his fund of anecdote inexhaustible. The best edition of his works is in eleven folio volumes; Leyden. The earliest edition published at Basle was in nine volumes. Prefixed to the Leyden edition is a life by Le Clerc, the editor, and his life, written by Beatus Rhenanus, is prefixed to the Basle edition. He wrote himself a short autobiography. (Bayle, Art. Erasmus Desiderius, Erasmi vita, 1615; Jortin, Life of Erasmus, London, 1758; Knight, Life of Erasmus, London, 1726; Burigny, Vie d'Erasme, 1757; Hess, Erasmus von Rotterdam, Zürich, 1790; Müller, Leben der Erasmus,1828; Nizard, Erasme sa vie et ses œuvres, Paris, 1855.)—J. E.
ERASO Y BENITO, a Spanish guerilla chief, born at Barreznim in Navarre in 1789; died in 1835. He was in active service against the French in the years 1809-14; in 1821, having been elected a member of the junta of Navarre, he got together a troop of eight hundred men, and the following year organized the volunteer horsemen of Navarre, who afterwards formed the most faithful and efficient corps in the service of the king. In 1833, on the death of Ferdinand, Eraso who had only twenty carabineers under his command, proclaimed Charles V. king of Spain, and for this audacious loyalty was successively promoted by Don Carlos to the rank of brigadier, major-general, and general. He was commandant of Navarre, when a fall from his horse put a period to his career.—J. S., G.
ERASTUS, Thomas, from whom the principles of Erastianism take their name, was born in 1524, either at Auggen, near Mullheim, in the duchy of Baden, or at Baden in Switzerland. His family name was Liebler or Lieber, which he exchanged, according to the custom of the age, into the classical equivalent Erastus, when he was a student at Basle. After finishing his theological studies at that university he repaired to Italy, where he devoted nine years to the study of philosophy and medicine in the universities of Padua and Bologna. In 1558 he was made court-physician to Otto Henry, elector of the Palatinate, and professor of medicine in the university of Heidelberg. As a philosopher he was honourably distinguished for his enlightened views of science, and was one of the first German writers to oppose himself to the superstitious studies of astrology, alchemy, and magic, as practised by Paracelsus and others. Unable, however, in all points to rise above the errors and superstitions of his age, he wrote a tract in 1577 in defence of the lawfulness of putting witches to death. Continuing all his life to take a deep interest in theology and ecclesiastical affairs, and having imbibed at Basle a strong attachment to the doctrines of Zwingle, he employed his great influence at Heidelberg with the court and the university, on the side of the Reformed as distinguished from the Lutheran views. He offered a dignified opposition to the encroachments of the zealous Lutheran superintendent. Professor Hesshus, and after the accession in 1559 of the Elector Frederick III., he assisted in bringing to Heidelberg the famous reformed theologians, Olevianus and Ursinus, who were both disciples of Calvin. He was nominated by the elector a member of the ecclesiastical consistory, and assisted in that capacity at the theological conferences of Heidelberg and Maulbronn in 1560 and 1564. He defended the Zwinglian view of the Lord's supper in a tract against the Lutheran Dr. John Marbach of Strasburg, published in 1565, and though preferring the Calvinistic type of the Reformation to the Lutheran, he continued steadfastly attached to the end of his life to the principles of Zwingle, in regard both to the sacraments and to church discipline and government, as distinguished from those of Geneva. When Olevianus and Ursinus urged upon the pious elector the introduction into the church of the palatinate of the presbyterian platform and discipline, Erastus joined with several other lay professors of the university in opposing the measure. He declared that such a proposal came sixty years too late; church censures were a tyranny, the power of presbyteries a Spanish inquisition. All that he and the rest could effect was some modification of the stringency of the Genevan rules, presbyteries being introduced by an edict of the elector in 1570. This obstinate opposition cost him the loss of the elector's favour, and exposed him to unjust suspicions on the part of the theologians and their supporters. He was ere long accused of leaning to the Socinian heresies of Poland and Transylvania, with the teachers of which he was alleged to be in friendly correspondence—a charge which he always steadfastly denied, but which was considered to be sufficiently established to warrant a sentence of excommunication against him, which, though irregular and unjust, was not again removed till the year 1575. In 1580 he left Heidelberg for Basle where he was made professor of moral philosophy, and where he survived till January 1, 1583. It is a curious fact that he never published anything himself on the subject of
