Just as the papacy was quick to recognise the revolutionary meaning of the Lutheran propositions, so Luther recognised how essentially revolutionary were all these wider movements which, quite against his will, had made use of his initiative to gain headway for themselves. In his retreat on the Wartburg after the Diet at Worms he heard of the radical doings of Carlstadt and the prophets from Zwickau at Wittenberg. At once he saw the danger and hurried to meet it. He succeeded in purifying Wittenberg from the taint of fanaticism only to scatter its seeds far and wide over the land. Henceforth it became perhaps the most important and distinctly the most difficult problem of the Lutheran party to show to the world its conservative and constructive side, without withdrawing for a moment from its original position of hostility to the papal system. And, finally, from the political side, the revolutionary tendencies of the Lutheran position were no less clearly visible. Luther's perfectly sound instinct had shown him from the first that the German people were not to be carried away by any abstractions of democracy. Nor, on the other hand, was there any hope of reviving the ancient authority of the emperor. Luther's appeal to the German nobility was based on the fact that whatever political virtue there was in Germany was to be found in its princes, and the response of the princes proved them equal to the emergency. The call to defend the new religion involved also the prospect of complete deliverance from all imperial control. The full meaning of the Lutheran movement is, of course, far clearer to us than it could have been to anyone in the year 1520, and yet as early as 1525 every one of the points of view just indicated had been clearly recognised by every thoughtful observer. The tendencies were plain; the question was, how soon and how far would tendencies develop into facts. In such a mortal strife as this where was there room for poor Erasmus? The answer to this question is the history of the seventeen remaining years of his life--years as full of activity as any that had gone before them. Protest as he might that this struggle was none of his, it is evident that it formed the real undertone of his thought and drew from him the utterances by which his character as a public man has ever since been estimated. We may, without unduly stretching the meaning of his changing attitude towards the reform, divide it into three stages. Until 1520 we feel the note of sympathy and the desire merely to restrain excesses. After that year, and increasingly as the economic and social results began to appear, we find the attitude of direct hostility becoming more pronounced. Finally, under the increasing pressure to justify himself in this hostility, we find Erasmus laying down in more formal shape his philosophical and theological position as against that of the Lutheran party. [Illustration: FACSIMILE OF LETTER OF ERASMUS TO JOHANNES LANGE.