"What help could I give Luther, by making myself the companion of his danger, except that two men should perish instead of one? I cannot wonder enough at the temper in which he has written, and surely he has brought great enmity upon the friends of sound learning. He has given us many splendid sayings and warnings; but would that he had not spoiled his good things by his intolerable faults. But even if everything he wrote had been right, I had no intention of putting my head in danger for the sake of the truth. It isn't every one that has the strength for martyrdom, and I sadly fear that if any tumult should arise, I should follow the example of Peter. I obey the decrees of emperor and pope when they are right, because that is my duty; when they are wrong I bear it, because that is the safe plan. This I believe to be permitted even to good men if there is no hope of improvement." There was precisely the point. Erasmus was ready to bear the ills of the world because he saw no power at hand disposed to remedy them. When others began to take the remedy into their own hands, then he could see in their efforts only riot, confusion, sedition, and all their attendant brood of horrors. CHAPTER IX DEFINITE BREACH WITH THE REFORMING PARTIES--HUTTEN'S "EXPOSTULATIO" AND ERASMUS' "SPONGIA" 1520-1523 We have followed the course of Erasmus' thought during these first critical years, 1518 and 1519, when the purpose of the Lutheran movement was shaping itself into a definite policy. It could not be said that Luther had at the outset any "programme" whatever. His leadership was to be defined by the resistless logic of the events which were now following in swift succession, each leading to the next with compelling force. In 1518 Luther had gone as far as Augsburg to meet the papal legate Cajetanus, who had simply ordered him to retract. Luther had replied that he was ready to be instructed, but until better informed, he was _bound_ by the word of God and could not think otherwise than as he did. He had got safely out of Augsburg, but never again risked himself within the papal grasp. In 1519 he had accepted the challenge of John Eck of Ingolstadt, one of the most skilful disputants of the day according to the scholastic method, to meet him at Leipzig under the protection of Duke George of Saxony and there discuss the issues presented by the Theses. So long as the discussion had kept to the traditional lines of mediæval argumentation Luther had felt himself at a disadvantage. He had chafed under this feeling and finally had allowed himself to be entrapped into that magnificent burst of passion in which he had declared that in the writings of the condemned heretic, John Hus, there was much that was "right Christian and evangelical." For the first time and partly without his own will he had said that the papacy was not an essential element of the church organisation.