"I would gladly be a martyr for Christ, if he would give me strength, but I am not willing to be a martyr for Luther.... Now if it were an important article of faith that the Mass is not a sacrifice, as Luther maintains, death ought to be sought and inflicted on its account.... What I call articles of faith are those handed down in all the creeds which the Church repeats,--and yet I do not deny the use of this phrase for some doctrines that are not expressed in the creeds. As to the reasons why the Eucharist is called a sacrifice, there is still a difference among theologians as there is also on many points about the primacy of the pope.... When I have stated that we ought to agree with the Church in all points, even if man's reason and the apparent meaning of Scripture were opposed, I make it clear enough that I will conform at once, if anyone will prove to me what the Church teaches on this point." As regards the communion in both kinds, his critics tried to trip him on the ground of a letter to Bohemia in which he had seemed to show some favour to the new-old doctrine. He protests that he never meant to question the teaching of the Church but only to suggest that more weighty reasons than he had as yet heard ought to be given for changing a practice which undoubtedly prevailed in the early centuries of the Church. "Nor do I doubt that there were such reasons, which perhaps on account of some scruple they preferred not to mention;--for it is not an impious thing in itself to partake under both forms.... As for the charge that on this point as on many others I agree with Luther, if I should say that is a straight lie, they would think me lacking in courtesy; but bad luck to that crafty book from which these extracts are taken! I try to persuade men to conform to the requirements of the Roman Church in partaking of the Eucharist; is that agreeing with Luther? Let anyone read what he writes on this business!" So anxious was Erasmus to set himself right with the world on this all-important topic, that in 1530, after his removal to Freiburg, he published an edition of a treatise by one Algerus, a Benedictine monk of Liege, who died at Cluny in 1131. This work, entitled A Treatise on the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Lord, was written in refutation of Berengar of Tours. In his dedication[162] Erasmus says: "I have never doubted the reality of the body of the Lord, and yet somehow by the reading of this work my faith has been not a little confirmed, and my reverence increased." In the course of this dedication he shows us very plainly the working of his mind. The _doctrine_ he admits to be of original validity, but as to its _form_, and as to the precise expressions one ought to use, there has been an historical development and this has come about by human means, through the natural process of controversy. [162] iii., 1274-1277.