In this answer, before launching out into invective against Erasmus he joins in his friend’s enthusiastic praise of the Evangel which has dawned: “Our cause was heard at Augsburg before the Emperor and the whole world, and has been found blameless; they could not but recognise the purity of our teaching.... We have confessed Christ before the evil generation of our day, and He too will confess us before God the Father and His angels.” “Wicel, I shall vanquish by silence and contempt, as my custom is. How many books I have disposed of and utterly annihilated merely by my silence, Eck, Faber, Emser, Cochlæus and many others could tell. Had I to fight with filth, I should, even if victorious, get dirty in the process. Hence I leave them to revel in their blasphemy, their lying and their calumny.” He might, he proceeds, leave Erasmus too to dissolve into smoke like those others. For a long time past he had looked on him as one crazy (“_delirus_”); since he had given birth to the “_viperaspides_” (i.e. “brood of vipers,” a play on the title of the “_Hyperaspistes_”) he had given up all hopes of his theology, but would follow Amsdorf’s advice and expose his malice and ignorance to the world. In contradiction to the facts he goes on to declare, that, in his “_Explanatio symboli_,” of 1533, Erasmus had “slyly planned” to undermine all respect for the Christian doctrines, and for this purpose ingratiated himself with his readers and sought to befool them, as the serpent did in Paradise. The Creed was nothing to him but a “fable,”--in support of which Luther adduces what purports to be a verbal quotation--nothing but the “mouthpiece and organ of Satan”; his method was but “a mockery of Christ”; according to him, the Redeemer had come into the world simply to give an example of holiness; His taking flesh of a virgin Erasmus described in obscene and blasphemous language; naturally the Apostles fared no better at his hands, and he even said of John the Evangelist, “_meros crepat mundos_” (because he mentions the “world” too often): there were endless examples of this sort to be met with in the writings of Erasmus. He was another Democrites or Epicurus; even what was doubtful in his statements had to be taken in the worst sense, and he himself (Luther) would be unable to believe this serpent even should he come to him with the most outspoken confession of Christianity. All this he wrote seemingly with the utmost conviction, as though it were absolutely certain. At about that same time he sent a warning to his friend Amsdorf not to allege anything against Erasmus, which was not certain, should he be tempted to write against him.[592] Yet Luther’s fresh charges were undoubtedly unjust to his opponent, although his letter really does forcibly portray much that was blame-worthy in Erasmus, particularly in his earlier work, for instance, his ambiguous style of writing, so often intentionally vague and calculated to engender scepticism.[593]