"in so many letters, so many books, and by so many proofs, I am continually declaring that I am unwilling to be involved with either party. I give many reasons for this determination, but have not put forth all of them. And in this matter my conscience makes no charge against me before Christ my judge. In the midst of such confusion and danger to my reputation and my life I have so moderated my judgments as neither to be the author of any disturbance nor to help any cause which I do not approve. If Hutten is enraged because I do not support Luther as he does, I protested three years ago in an appendix added to my Familiar Colloquies at Louvain, that I was totally a stranger to that faction and always would be. I am not only keeping outside of it myself, but I am urging as many friends as I can to do the same, and I will never cease to do so. I mean by 'faction' the zeal of a mind sworn as it were to everything that Luther has written or is writing or ever will write. This kind of a sentiment often imposes upon good men; but I have openly announced to all my friends that if they cannot love me except as a Lutheran they may have whatever feeling they like about me. I am a lover of liberty. I will not and I cannot serve a party." Here once more Erasmus saves himself by a definition. If to be a Lutheran were to swear to every word of Luther's, then, of course, no man in his senses would confess to the party name. Erasmus knew as well as anyone that parties for action were never formed by any such test. Men joined a party because they were in general sympathy with others and believed that the time for common action had come. This common action was the thing he could not bear to think of. To him it meant _confusiones_, _tumultus_, _tragœdias_, and all the other horrors of open conflict. We leave the Hutten episode, closed as it was by the untimely death of the brilliant, reckless genius who had brought it on, with the feeling that Hutten's charge was substantially true. Erasmus, with all the best part of him, was fighting the Lutheran battle and knew he was doing it. He recoiled before the fear of violence and then had to justify himself. It would be interesting to know how far the definition of the papacy as a metropolitan see among others represented a real opinion of Erasmus. Probably it was a rhetorical conclusion; but it can hardly have made the _Spongia_ a welcome visitor at Rome, and it is not surprising that this passage was expurgated by the Roman censorship.