From
Lehmann (converted Catholic priest). Out of the Labyrinth:
Erasmus, the
scholarly, humanist contemporary of Luther, once shrewdly said
of him: “Luther committed two unpardonable sins. He
attacked the power of the pope and the bellies of the monks.“
Erasmus was also a rebellious priest but, unlike Luther,
gained fame and retained the good will of the ecclesiastical
authorities by attacking the abuses of the Church solely on
the intellectual level. Himself a priest and the son of a
priest, Erasmus kept on such good terms with the pope that he
even obtained release from the law of celibacy. Unlike Luther
he seems to have experienced no spiritual conversion. By his
clever ridicule he discredited the inanities of the corrupt
system of Catholic Church learning known as Scholasticism, but
he played safe and kept well out of the way of the anathemas
and heresy-hunting agents of the pope.
The lasting
work of reform accomplished by Luther was due to the fact
that he acted from personal conviction as a result of his
own spiritual conversion. He kindled a fire of the
spirit which is not easy to extinguish. Erasmus’ adventure was
intellectual. Luther’s was spiritual and therefore involved
greater risks but resulted in tremendous blessings for
humanity. Of Erasmus Luther wrote to
Spalatin in March 1517: “I must confess that his sharp and
undiminished attack upon the ignorance of the priests and
monks pleases me. But I fear that he does not promote the
cause of Christ and God’s grace sufficiently. For him
human considerations have an absolute preponderance over
divine… . No one is truly wise in the Christian sense simply
because he knows Greek and Hebrew.“
