piece of richly-wrought cloth, which Luther thought almost too good for a monk's frock. Spalatin had also been a member of that circle of 'poets' at Erfurt; he kept up his connection with them, and corresponded with Erasmus, the head of the Humanists, and thus acted as a medium of communication for Luther in this quarter. Elsewhere in Germany we find the theology of Augustine or of St. Paul, as represented by Luther, taking root first among his friends at Nüremberg; in 1517 W. Link came there as prior of the Augustinian convent. [Illustration: Fig. 7.--SPALATIN. (from L. Cranach's Portrait.)] We have seen how Luther as a student associated with the young Humanists at Erfurt, and now, whilst striving further on that road of theology which he had marked out for himself, he was still accessible to the general interests of learning as represented by the Humanistic movement. He made the acquaintance, at least by letter, of the celebrated Mutianus Rufus of Gotha, whom those 'poets' honoured as their famous master, and with whom Lange and Spalatin maintained a respectful intercourse. When the Humanist John Reuchlin, then the first Hebrew scholar in Germany, was declared a heretic by zealous theologians and monks, on account of the protests he raised against the burning of the Rabbinical books of the Jews, and a fierce quarrel broke out in consequence, Luther, on being asked by Spalatin for his opinion, declared himself strongly for the Humanists against those who, being gnats themselves, tried to swallow camels. His heart, he said, was so full of this matter that his tongue could not find utterance. Still, the bold satire with which his former college friend Crotus and other Humanists lashed their opponents and held them up to ridicule, as in the famous 'Epistolae Virorum Obscurorum,' was not to Luther's taste at all. The matter was to him far too serious for such treatment.