Meanwhile, such Humanists as wished to enjoy the utmost possible freedom for their own learned pursuits flocked around Reuchlin against his literary enemies, and cared very little about the authorities of the Church. The bold monk and his party excited neither their interest nor their concern. Many of them thought of him, no doubt, when he was engaged in the heat of the contest about indulgences, as did Ulrich von Hutten, who wrote to a friend: 'A quarrel has broken out at Wittenberg between two hot-headed monks, who are screaming and shouting against each other. It is to be hoped that they will eat one another up.' To such men the theological questions at issue seemed not worth consideration. At the same time they took care to pay all necessary respect to the princes of the Church, who had shown favour to them personally and to their learning, and did homage to them, notwithstanding much that must have shocked them in their conduct as ecclesiastics. Thus Hutten did not scruple to enter the service of the same Archbishop Albert who had opened the great traffic in indulgences in Germany, but who was also a patron of literature and art, and was only too glad to be recognised publicly by an Erasmus. We hear nothing of any remonstrances made to him by Erasmus himself. In the same spirit that dictated the above remark of Hutten, Mosellanus, who opened with a speech the disputation at Leipzig, wrote to Erasmus during the preparations for that event. There will be a rare battle, he said, and a bloody one, coming off between two Scholastics; ten such men as Democritus would find enough to laugh over till they were tired. Moreover, Luther's fundamental conception of religion, with his doctrine of man's sinfulness and need of salvation, so far from corresponding, was in direct antagonism with that Humanistic view of life which seemed to have originated from the devotion to classical antiquity, and to revive the proud, self-satisfied, independent spirit of heathendom. Even in an Erasmus Luther had thought he perceived an inability to appreciate his new doctrine.