Then raising his voice against the great mass of ecclesiastical injunctions, regarding dress, fasts, feast-days, vows, marriage, and confessions, by which the people were oppressed, and the priest was enriched, Erasmus exclaims, "In churches, the interpretation of the gospel is scarcely thought of.[106] The better part of sermons must meet the wishes of the commissaries of indulgences. The holy doctrine of Christ must be suppressed, or interpreted contrary to its meaning, and for their profit. Cure is now hopeless, unless Christ himself turn the hearts of kings and pontiffs, and awaken them to enquire after true piety." [106] "In templis vix vacat Evangelium interpretari." (Annot. ad Matth., xi, 30, "Jugum meum suave.") There is scarcely leisure in churches to interpret the gospel. The works of Erasmus rapidly succeeded each other. He laboured incessantly, and his writings were read just as they came from his pen. That spirit, that native life, that rich, refined, sparkling and bold intellect, which, without restraint, poured out its treasures before his contemporaries, carried away and entranced vast numbers of readers, who eagerly devoured the works of the philosopher of Rotterdam. In this way he soon became the most influential man in Christendom, and saw pensions and crowns raining down upon him from all quarters. When we contemplate the great revolution, which, at a later period, renewed the Church, it is impossible not to own that Erasmus was used by many as a kind of bridge, over which they passed. Many who would have taken alarm at evangelical truths, if presented in all their force and purity, yielded to the charm of his writings, and ultimately figured among the most zealous promoters of the Reformation. But the very circumstance of his being good in preparing, prevented him from being good at performing. "Erasmus knows very well how to expose error," says Luther, "but he knows not how to teach the truth." The gospel was not the fire which warmed and sustained his life, the centre around which his activity radiated. He was, first of all, a learned, and, in the second place only, a Christian man. He was too much under the influence of vanity to have a decided influence on his age. He anxiously calculated the effect which every step he took might have on his reputation, and there was nothing he liked so much to talk of as himself and his fame. "The pope," wrote he to an intimate friend with puerile vanity, at the period when he became the declared opponent of Luther, "the pope has sent me a letter full of kindness and expressions of respect. His secretary solemnly vows that the like was never heard of, and that it was written word for word at the pope's own dictation."