In one of his Apologies Erasmus states of his earlier writings--in which, it is true he often goes too far--that “neither Lutherans nor anti-Lutherans could clearly show him to have called into question any single dogma of the Church”; though numbers had tried hard to do so, they had merely succeeded in “bringing forward affinities, congruities, grounds for scandal and suspicion, and not a few big fibs.”[713] Concerning his tendency to scepticism he says nothing. Of the excessive zeal of certain critics he says in the same passage: “Some theologians, in their hatred for Luther, condemn good and pious sayings which do not emanate from us at all, but from Christ and the Apostles. Thus, owing to their malice and stupidity, many remain in the party adverse to the Church who would otherwise have forsaken it, and many join it who would otherwise have kept aloof.” He himself was not to be drawn by invective to embrace Luther’s cause. He even ventures to affirm that he was the first, who, almost single-handed (“_ipse primus omnium ac pene solus restiti pullulanti malo_”), opposed Luther, and that he had proved a true prophet in predicting that the play which the world had greeted with such warm applause would have a sad termination.--He speaks more truly when he seriously regrets having fanned the flames by his writings. Thus, in 1521, he writes to Baron Mountjoy: “Had I known beforehand that things would shape themselves so, I would either have refrained from writing certain things, or have written them differently.”[714] If Luther, after having met with strong opposition from Erasmus, in place of the support he had anticipated, denounced him as an infidel Epicurean, he only demonstrated anew how far passion and bitter disappointment could carry him.[715] “Luther,” says Kawerau, “when passing judgment on Erasmus, sees only the dark side of his character, and this the more as years go by.” “In his writings, and even in his most harmless utterances, Luther scents evil. In the contempt he pours upon him he is often grossly unfair, and, as a whole, his judgment of him does not do justice either to the greatness or the character of Erasmus.”[716]