"Men have come to Basel who were said to be under suspicion of being partisans of Luther, and I am ready to have this all charged upon me, if a single one of them has ever come by my invitation or if I have not protested to my friends that it was exceedingly disagreeable to me. If persons of this or that faction come hither, with what reason can this be laid upon me? I am not the gatekeeper of Basel and hold no magistracy here! Hutten was here as a visitor for a few days and neither came to see me nor did I visit him. And yet if it had depended upon me, I would not have denied him an interview, an old friend and a man whose wonderfully happy and genial talents I cannot even now help admiring.... He could not do without a stove, on account of his health, and I cannot bear one, and so the fact is, we did not see each other." He would not hesitate, he says, to receive Luther himself, and would give him some wholesome warnings. There is good on both sides. "I am not sure that either side can be put down without grave disaster to many good things." If only it might be permitted him to be a mere spectator of events! But here he is, pulled hither and yon by the parties, each trying to make him declare himself squarely against the other. While one party was accusing him of being the author of most of the Lutheran writings, the other suspected him of having written King Henry's famous answer to Luther. Upon this welcome text Erasmus builds up a long story of his first acquaintance with this royal treatise, a story as unimportant as the book itself. The outcome of it all is that he is firmly convinced that the king wrote the book with his own wits. "Even if he desired the help of scholars, his court is filled with learned and eloquent men." Again they tell him that four years ago he ought to have retired from the stage, content with his great services to theology, his restoration of the true sources of Christianity, etc. All this is very flattering, but he is held to his work by a _choragos_ whose orders he dare not disobey. Once more, he is charged with speaking too highly of the pope. What he says of Leo is very well, but, they say, how can we be sure of Leo's successor. Well, there have been good popes before Leo, and why not after him? They say "Erasmus ought to declare: 'Thou, pope, art Antichrist! you, bishops, are false leaders! that Roman see of yours is an abomination to God!' and many other such things and worse." This is the old Erasmian method, which he had consistently followed from the beginning--to confine his criticism to evil men and refrain from criticising institutions. If men were good, institutions would be good.