As soon as the "Free Will" was published, Erasmus hastened, as usual, to justify himself by writing in all directions to the persons whose approval was of most value to him,--to Henry VIII., Wolsey, and Fisher in England, to Melanchthon and Duke George in Germany, and to Aleander in Italy. He represents the work as a proof of his courage--"a bold deed in Germany," he says to Wolsey, while to Aleander he complains that enemies of his in Italy are abusing him for unsound scholarship. "They call me '_Errasmus_' in Rome, as if your writers had never made a mistake. They say I am unfriendly to Italy, whereas no one speaks more heartily than I of the genius of the Italians.... I have no doubt that you and I would get on beautifully, if we could only live together." Luther waited a full year before replying to the Diatribe. It was a year of especial trial to him, for within those months it seemed as if the worst prophecies of his worst enemies were being fulfilled. All the social and economic restlessness of the time was beginning to make use of his teaching as a justification for revolt against the existing order of society. Wholly against his will he found himself held responsible for confusions he abhorred and for doctrines which seemed to him worse, if possible, than those he had undertaken to combat. His immediate duty was to clear himself of these imputations; to show how utterly foreign to his spirit and his aims were the theology of Carlstadt, the communistic speculations of Münzer, and the revolutionary radicalism of the peasant leaders. He accomplished this for all who were able to follow his argumentation in the remarkable series of pamphlets published in 1524 and 1525. Then he returned to the assault of Erasmus. The most striking quality of the long and laboured treatise, _De servo arbitrio_,[158] with which he replied to the Diatribe, is its perfect frankness. Indeed Luther was almost compelled to frankness by his detestation of what seemed to him the perilously shifty method of his opponent. Erasmus had deprecated violence; Luther reminds him that no great good ever came into the world without commotion and overturn of an existing order. Christ came, not to send peace, but a sword. Erasmus had said that true things were not to be uttered at all times and had given certain illustrations; Luther disposes of this point by showing that the things proposed in these illustrations were not true and therefore, of course, ought not to be told at any time. Erasmus had asked: "If there is no freedom of will, who will try to amend his life?" Luther frankly replied, "No man. No man can. The elect will be amended by the divine spirit; the rest will perish unamended." Erasmus had said that a door would be opened to all iniquity by this doctrine. Luther says: "So be it; that is a part of the evil that is to be borne; but at the same time there is opened to the elect a door to salvation, an entrance into heaven, a way to God."