There can be no doubt that Hutten was uttering the voice of the great Lutheran party, as it must now be called. Although called out by a personal attack, the _Expostulatio_ keeps itself throughout on higher than personal grounds. It is not an apology for Hutten; it is a fierce outburst of honest indignation against a man who seemed to be throwing away a noble mind and conspicuous gifts through lack of courage and simple honesty. Hutten's expressions of admiration for his opponent have the ring of absolute sincerity. He had admired him above all other men, and his wrath is tempered by pain and honest sorrow at his failure to lead where none could lead so well. If Hutten made the mistake which so many have made since his time, of asking from Erasmus a kind of service for which he was by nature unfitted, it was a mistake which honours him who made it. The time for balancing good and evil had gone. If anything was to be done, it must be by the united action of all who were in substantial agreement upon the great essential questions of the hour. There had been enough of apologising and trimming, and this great word of Hutten was the proclamation of what was inevitably to come. When it came into Erasmus' hands he determined at once to reply, and the result was the famous pamphlet which he called _Spongia adversus aspergines Hutteni_, "a sponge to wipe out the bespatterings of Hutten." It is a work twice as long as the _Expostulatio_, written, so its author says, in six days during the month of July, 1523, but not published until the autumn and after the death of Hutten, which occurred August 29th. The _Spongia_ is as distinctly a work of personal apology as the _Expostulatio_ was the opposite. It takes up, one by one, the points made by Hutten and deals with them after the fashion with which we are now so familiar that any extended examination would in no way enlarge our understanding of Erasmus' true position. The greater part of Hutten's charges he accepts in one or another sense and then tries to take away their force. The most common way of doing this is by showing that he has never really been inconsistent with himself, but has only adapted himself for the moment to given conditions lest the one great cause of pure learning should suffer by too great zeal. Nowhere does Erasmus show himself a more complete master of the word "if." He will admit everything with an "if." Hutten has accused him of keeping on too good terms with the pope after all the abuse which he has heaped upon things papistical--very well, he has praised popes, but he has done this because he believed them to be men who meant well to the cause of Christ. If otherwise he would be the last to praise them. Erasmus' analysis of the papal power here is a monument of his skill in turning about words to suit his purpose.