took a deep interest in Luther's evangelical doctrine, and revered him as a man inspired by the Holy Ghost. Among the number of theologians who ranked next to Erasmus, the well-known John Oecolampadius, then a preacher at Augsburg, and almost of the same age as Luther, came forward in his support, towards the end of 1519, with a pamphlet directed against Eck. Erasmus himself in 1518, at least in a private letter to Luther's friend Lange at Erfurt, of which the latter we may be sure did not leave Luther in ignorance, declared that Luther's theses were bound to commend themselves to all good men, almost without exception; that the present Papal domination was a plague to Christendom; the only question was whether tearing open the wound would do any good, and whether it was not conceivable that the matter could be carried through without an actual rupture. Luther, on his part, approached Reuchlin and Erasmus by letter. To the former he wrote, at the urgent entreaty of Melancthon, in December 1518, to the latter in the following March. Both letters are couched in the refined language befitting these learned men, and particularly Erasmus, and contain warm expressions of respect and deference, though in a tone of perfect dignity, and free from the hyperboles to which Erasmus was usually treated by his common admirers. At the same time Luther was careful indeed to conceal the other and less favourable side of his estimate of Erasmus, which he had already formed in his own mind and expressed to his friends. We can see how bent he was, notwithstanding, upon a closer intimacy with that distinguished man. Reuchlin, then an old man, would have nothing to do with Luther and the questions he had raised. He even sought to alienate his nephew Melancthon from him, by bidding him abstain from so perilous an enterprise. [Illustration: Fig. l9.--W. PIRKHEIMER. (From a Portrait by Albert Dürer.)]