"If anyone finds fault with the preposterous opinion of the vulgar, which gives to the highest virtues the lowest place and _vice versa_ and is specially shocked by unimportant evils and the reverse, then one is straightway called to account as if one favoured those evils which seem to him less than some other evil; or as if he were condemning certain good actions because he thinks others are even better. So if one teaches that it is safer to trust in good deeds than in the papal pardons, he is not condemning those pardons, but is giving the preference to what is more certainly in accord with the teaching of Christ. So also, if one thinks that they act more wisely who stay at home and look after their wives and children, than they who go running about to Rome or Jerusalem or Compostella, and that the money wasted in long and dangerous journeys were much more piously spent upon the worthy and honest poor, one is not condemning the pious impulse of those persons, but is only preferring what comes nearer to true piety. In truth it is not a fault of our times alone to attack certain evils as if they were the only ones, while we smooth over, as if they were not evils at all, others far worse than those we are abusing." One feels here an allusion to that overemphasis on outward organisation which was to be Erasmus' great objection to the German reform. Instead of this he would have the true value of the institution so clearly brought out that it would counteract all tendency to abuse. This letter was one of the last pieces of Erasmus' writing at Basel before the long illness of which he speaks in the letter about his journey to Louvain. He had spent the year 1518 chiefly at Basel in tireless industry. He arrived at Louvain only, as we have seen, to break down again. It was 1519 before we find him drawn directly into the Lutheran controversy. The letter to Volzius just quoted was printed as a preface to a new edition of the Enchiridion in 1518. The first step in the correspondence with Luther was taken by Luther himself in March, 1519, and seems to have been suggested by the very passage we have here made use of to show Erasmus' feeling about indulgences. Luther's tone in this first letter is eminently characteristic of his attitude during these early years of his public activity. It is modest and self-depreciating to a degree. Words fail him to express his admiration for the great scholar. It is really monstrous that they should not know each other, when he has so long been worshipping in silence.[122] [122] i., 423-D.