"I have never," he says, "spoken inconsistently of the Roman See. Tyranny, greed, and other vices, ancient grounds of complaint common to all good men, I have never approved. Nor have I ever totally condemned indulgences, though I have always hated this shameless trade in them. What I think about ceremonies, my books declare in many places. But when have I abused the Canon Law or the papal decretals? Whatever he means by 'calling the pope to order' I am not quite clear. I suppose he will admit that there is a church at Rome; for the multitude of its sins cannot cause it to be any the less a church--if this is not so then we have no churches at all. And I assume that it is an orthodox church; for if certain bad men are mingled with the rest, yet the church abides in the good ones. And I suppose he will allow that this church has a bishop, and that this bishop is a metropolitan ... now then among metropolitans what is there absurd in giving the first place to the Roman pontiff? for this great power which they have been usurping to themselves during several centuries, no one has ever heard me defend. "But Hutten will not endure a wicked pope;--why, that is what we are all praying for, that the pope may be a man worthy of his apostolic office. But, if he be not that, let him be deposed; and by the same token, let all bishops be deposed who do not duly perform their functions. But an especial plague of the world has been flowing now for many years from Rome. Would that it could be denied! Now, however, has come a pope who is striving, as I believe, with all his might, to give back to us that See and that Curia purified." Yet Erasmus had been overwhelming the dead Leo, the source of this pestilent flood, with every conceivable kind of flattery. Now he abuses him, in order to make his point that things are all going to be set right by the excellent Adrian. But this way of setting things right is just what Hutten does not hope for, he says. "Yet there are many reasons for this hope, and charity, according to Paul, 'hopeth all things.' If Hutten were declaring war upon evils, not upon men, he would hasten to Rome and help this pope who is now trying to do the very same things he is himself striving for. But Hutten has declared war upon the Roman pontiff and all his followers.... The Romanists would like always to have such enemies as Hutten." If there was an honest Erasmus anywhere under this mass of words, it seems pretty clear that he was for Hutten rather than against him. That Erasmus had any such honest side one is tempted to doubt when one reads his defence against the charge of trifling with the truth. Hutten had accused him[147] of saying that the truth ought not always to be spoken, and that a great deal depended upon how it was put forth. [147] _Expostulatio_, § 180.