But if Erasmus was unlike the 18th century rationalist in that he did not declare war against the church, but remained a Catholic and mourned the disruption, he was yet a true rationalist in principle. The principle that reason is the one only guide of life, the supreme arbiter of all questions, politics and religion included, has its earliest and most complete exemplar in Erasmus. He does not dogmatically denounce the rights of reason, but he practically exercises them. Along with the charm of style, the great attraction of the writings of Erasmus is this unconscious freedom by which they are pervaded. It must excite our surprise that one who used his pen so freely should have escaped the pains and penalties which invariably overtook minor offenders in the same kind. For it was not only against the clergy and the monks that he kept up a ceaseless stream of satiric raillery; he treated nobles, princes and kings with equal freedom. No 18th century republican has used stronger language than has this pensioner of Charles V. "The people build cities, princes pull them down; the industry of the citizens creates wealth for rapacious lords to plunder; plebeian magistrates pass good laws for kings to violate; the people love peace, and their rulers stir up war." Such outbursts are frequent in the _Adagia_. These freedoms are part cause of Erasmus's popularity. He was here in sympathy with the secret sore of his age, and gave utterance to what all felt but none dared to whisper but he. It marks the difference between 1513 and 1669 that, in a reprint of the _Julius Exclusus_ published in 1669 at Oxford, it was thought necessary to leave out a sentence in which the writer of that dialogue, supposed by the editor to be Erasmus, asserts the right of states to deprive and punish bad kings. It is difficult to say to what we are to ascribe his immunity from painful consequences. We have to remember that he was removed from the scene early in the reaction, before force was fully organized for the suppression of the revolution. And his popular works, the _Adagia_, and the _Colloquia_ (1524), had established themselves as standard books in the more easy going age, when power, secure in its unchallenged strength, could afford to laugh with the laughers at itself. At the date of his death the Catholic revival, with its fell antipathy to art and letters, was only in its infancy; and when times became dangerous, Erasmus cautiously declined to venture out of the protection of the Empire, refusing repeated invitations to Italy and to France. "I had thought of going to Besancon," he said, "ne non essem in ditione Caesaris" (_Ep._ xxx. 74; 1299). In Italy a Bembo and a Sadoleto wrote a purer Latin than Erasmus, but contented themselves with pretty phrases, and were careful to touch no living chord of feeling. In France it was necessary for a Rabelais to hide his free-thinking under a disguise of revolting and unintelligible jargon. It was only in the Empire that such