[Sidenote: CHAP. XII.] It appears that _Erasmus_ had it in contemplation to compose three dialogues, upon the important subject of religious pacification: the speakers were to have been Luther, under the name of Thrasimacus, and a Catholic divine, under that of Eubolus. In the first dialogue, they were to have discussed the proper methods of terminating the religious controversies of the times; in the second, to have investigated what were the points in controversy, the belief of which was essential to a member of the church of Christ; in the third, they were to have inquired what were the best means to procure a good understanding between the contending parties, and to effect their union. It is to be lamented that Erasmus did not execute his design. His general sentiments appear in his _Paraphrase upon the 83d Psalm_; they are expressed with great wisdom and moderation.[071] [Sidenote: XII. 3. His Project of Religious Pacification.] _Wicelius_,--who is next mentioned by Grotius, had been professed in a religious order: had quitted it, and embraced Lutheranism: he afterwards forsook that communion, and returned to the Catholic: upon this, he was appointed to a curacy; and, in the discharge of his functions, obtained general esteem: he was much regarded by the Emperors Ferdinand and Maximilian. In 1537, he published at Leipsic a Latin work, "On the method of procuring Religious Concord,--_Methodus Concordiæ Ecclesiasticæ_." He addressed it to the pope, to all sovereigns, bishops, doctors, and generally to all christians, exhorting them to peace, and to desist from contention. He assumed in it, that the true religion had been preserved in the Catholic church; but he allows that modern doctors had involved it in numerous scholastic subtleties, unknown to antiquity. He complains that on one hand the reformers left nothing untouched; that, on the other, the scholastics would retain every abuse, and every superfluity: Wisdom, he thought, lay between them; the reformers should have respected what antiquity consecrated; the Catholics should have abandoned modern doctrines and modern practices to the discretion of individuals. The "Royal Road," or _Via Regia_ of Wicelius, a still more important work, was published by him at Helmstadt in 1537. Both works were approved, and the perusal of them warmly recommended, by the emperors: they have been often reprinted; they are inserted, with a life of their author, in the second volume of _Brown's Fasciculus_. "If all the divines of those times," says Father Simôn the oratorian,[073] "had possessed the same spirit as Wicelius, the affairs of religion might have taken a different turn." [Sidenote: CHAP. XII.] [Sidenote: XII.3. His Project of Religious Pacification] _Cassander_, another peacemaker, mentioned with praise by Grotius, is the subject of a long and interesting article in _Dupin's Ecclesiastical History_:[074]