On one other doctrinal question, of vast importance in the history of the Reformation, we must examine the utterances of Erasmus; namely, on the question of the Eucharist. While the problem of the freedom of the will involved the most profound philosophical speculation, the eucharistic controversy had to deal with a matter which, viewed from one side, was a mere question of usage, but from another led at once into a region where blind faith was plainly set in opposition to human reason. From an early day the organised Church had seen the value of the ideas which had taken form in the service of the Eucharist and had insisted with absolutely unwavering determination upon the doctrinal formula which expressed them. First brought sharply before the mediæval world by the controversy of Paschasius in the ninth century, the issue was revived by Berengar of Tours in the eleventh, and all the ingenuity of the early scholasticism of Anselm's day was displayed in giving to the idea a foundation that could be neither misunderstood nor evaded. Thus crystallised into a philosophic reality by the great formulators of the thirteenth century, the crass statement of the Church had been questioned anew by Wiclif. Hus had, on this point, it is true, professed allegiance to the Church, but the Hussite party, by its passionate insistence upon the right of the laity to receive the Eucharist under both forms, had protested against the whole conception of the sacrament as a sacrifice. So also the tendency of the great mystical movement had been to accustom men's minds to a spiritual interpretation of outward forms.