When he found that the case was desperate; that his exhortations were but words addressed to the winds; that corruption had tainted the blood; that there was no hope except in revolution--as, indeed, in his heart he knew from the first that there was none--then his place ought to have been with Luther. But Erasmus, as the tempest rose, could but stand still in feeble uncertainty. The responsibilities of his reputation weighed him down. The Lutherans said, 'You believe as we do.' The Catholics said, 'You are a Lutheran at heart; if you are not, prove it by attacking Luther.' He grew impatient. He told lies. He said he had not read Luther's books, and had no time to read them. What was he, he said, that he should meddle in such a quarrel. He was the vine and the fig tree of the Book of Judges. The trees said to them, Rule over us. The vine and the fig tree answered, they would not leave their sweetness for such a thankless office. 'I am a poor actor,' he said; 'I prefer to be a spectator of the play.' But he was sore at heart, and bitter with disappointment. All had been going on so smoothly--literature was reviving, art and science were spreading, the mind of the world was being reformed in the best sense by the classics of Greece and Rome, and now an apple of discord had been flung out into Europe. The monks who had fought against enlightenment could point to the confusion as a fulfilment of their prophecies; and he, and all that he had done, was brought to disrepute. To protect himself from the Dominicans, he was forced to pretend to an orthodoxy which he did not possess. Were all true which Luther had written, he pretended that it ought not to have been said, or should have been addressed in a learned language to the refined and educated. He doubted whether it was not better on the whole to teach the people lies for their good, when truth was beyond their comprehension. Yet he could not for all that wish the Church to be successful. 'I fear for that miserable Luther,' he said; 'the popes and princes are furious with him. His own destruction would be no great matter, but if the monks triumph there will be no bearing them. They will never rest till they have rooted learning out of the land. The Pope expects _me_ to write against Luther. The orthodox, it appears, can call him names--call him blockhead, fool, heretic, toadstool, schismatic, and Antichrist--but they must come to me to answer his arguments.' 'Oh! that this had never been,' he wrote to our own Archbishop Warham. 'Now there is no hope for any good. It is all over with quiet learning, thought, piety, and progress; violence is on one side and folly on the other; and they accuse me of having caused it all. If I joined Luther I could only perish with him, and I do not mean to run my neck into a halter. Popes and emperors must decide matters. I will accept what is good, and do as I can with the rest. Peace on any terms is better than the justest war.'