Remembering that this sketch of Colet was written two or three years after Luther had nailed his Theses on the church door at Wittenberg, we may gain from it a good insight into the views not only of Colet, but of Erasmus as well, upon many of the doubtful questions of the early Reformation days. Nowhere, perhaps, in Erasmus' writings do we find more temperate and cautious suggestions. Already we may discern in clear outline the determining motives of his position in the great struggle. In his pet abhorrence, the monastic system, Colet went with him to the point of free criticism of faithless and irreligious monks, but, like Erasmus himself when he was, so to speak, in the witness-box, he had nothing to say against the monastic life in itself. He had little to do with monks and gave them nothing at his death, but he professed great affection for the life of seclusion and often declared that he would enter it himself "if he could find anywhere an order really devoted to apostolic living. When I was setting out for Italy, he commissioned me to inquire on this point, saying that he had heard that in Italy there were some monks really sensible and pious. For he did not follow the vulgar opinion which calls that 'religion' which is sometimes only weakness of intellect. He used to say that he nowhere found greater virtue than among married people, since they were restrained from falling into many vices by their natural affections, by the care of children and by their household duties. "On this account he was more charitable towards the fleshly sins of the clergy. He used to say that he hated pride and avarice in a priest more than if he kept a hundred concubines. Not indeed that he thought incontinence in priest or monk was a trifling fault, but that the other vices seemed to him farther removed from true piety. There was no kind of person more hateful to him than those bishops who acted more like wolves than like shepherds, commending themselves to the crowd by their sacred offices, their ceremonies, their benedictions and indulgences when really they were heart and soul devoted to this world, to glory and to greed.