He heaps ridicule also upon the public preaching of those profound theologians. It was mere stage-playing; and their delivery was the very acme of the droll and the absurd. "Good Lord! how mimical are their gestures! What heights and falls in their voice! What toning, what bawling, what singing, what squeaking, what grimaces, what making of mouths, what apes' faces and distorting of their countenances!" And their matter was even more ridiculous than their manner. One of these absurd divines, discoursing upon the name of Jesus, subtly pretended to discover a revelation of the Trinity in the very letters of which the name was composed. It was declined only in _three_ cases. That was one mysterious coincidence. Then the nominative ended in S, the accusative in M, and the ablative in U, which obviously indicated Summus, the beginning; Medius, the middle; and Ultimus, the end of all things. Other examples he gives of the same profound nature. Nor did the different orders of monks escape his lash. He dwelt upon the preposterous importance they attached to trifling details of dress and ceremonial. "They must be very critical in the precise number of their knots, in the tying-on of their sandals, of what precise colors their respective habits should be made, and of what stuff; how broad and long their girdles, how big and in what fashion their hoods, whether their bald crowns be of the right cut to a hair's-breadth, how many hours they must sleep, and at what minute rise to prayers." In this manner he proceeds for many a sprightly page, rising from monks to bishops and cardinals, and from them to popes, "who _pretend_ themselves Christ's vicars," while resembling the Lord in nothing. Luther never went farther, never was bolder or more biting, than Erasmus in this essay. But all went for nothing with the great leader of reform, because Erasmus refused to abandon the Church, and cast in his lot openly with the reformers. Luther calls him "a mere Momus," who laughed at Catholic and Protestant alike, and looked upon the Christian religion itself very much as Lucian did upon the Greek. "Whenever I pray," said Luther once, "I pray for a curse upon Erasmus." It was certainly a significant fact that in the heat of that contest Erasmus should have given the world a translation of Lucian. But he was a great, wise, genial soul, whose fame will brighten as that age becomes more justly and familiarly known to us. The first place in the annals of such a warfare belongs of right to the soldiers who took their lives in their hands and went forth to meet the foe in the open field, braving torture, infamy, and death for the cause. Such were Luther and his followers. But there is a place in human memory for the philosopher and the humorist who first made the contest possible, and then rendered it shorter and easier. CHAPTER VIII. COMIC ART AND THE REFORMATION.