The Augustinian doctrine of ‘original sin’ compared to the _epicycles_ of the astrologers! No wonder that Luther was _moved_ as he traced in these Annotations symptoms of wide divergence from his own Augustinian views. In writing to Spalatin, he told him that he was ‘moved;’ and in asking him to question Erasmus further on the subject, he added that he felt no doubt that the difference in opinion between himself and Erasmus was a real one, because that, as regards the interpretation of Scripture, he saw clearly that Erasmus preferred Jerome to Augustine, just as much as he himself preferred Augustine to Jerome. Jerome, evidently on principle, he said, follows the _historical_ sense, and he very much feared that the great authority of Erasmus might induce many to attempt to defend that _literal_, i.e. _dead_, understanding [of the Scriptures] of which the commentaries of Lyra and almost all after Augustine are full.[636] Still Luther went on with the study of his ‘Novum Instrumentum,’ and we find him writing again from his ‘hermitage’ at Wittemberg, that every day as he reads he loses his liking for Erasmus. And again the reason crops out. Erasmus, with all his Greek and Hebrew, is lacking in Christian wisdom; ‘just as Jerome, with all his knowledge of five languages, was not a match for Augustine with his one.’... ‘The judgment of a man who attributes _anything_ to the human will’ [which Jerome and Erasmus did] is ‘one thing, the judgment of him who recognises _nothing but grace_’ [which Augustine and Luther did] ‘is quite another thing.’... ‘Nevertheless [continues Luther] I carefully keep this opinion to myself, lest I should play into the hands of his enemies. May God give him understanding in his own good time!’[637] [Sidenote: Difference in principle between Erasmus and Luther.] This is not the place to discuss the rights of the question between Luther and Erasmus. It is well, however, that by the preservation of these letters the fact is established to us, which as yet was unknown to Erasmus, that this Augustinian monk, as the result of hard-fought mental struggle, had years before this irrevocably adopted and, if we may so speak, welded into his very being that Augustinian system of religious convictions, a considerable portion of which Erasmus made no scruple in rejecting; that at the root of their religious thought there was a divergence in principle which must widen as each proceeded on his separate path--unknown as yet, let me repeat it, to Erasmus, but already fully recognised, though wisely concealed, by Luther. IV. THE ‘EPISTOLÆ OBSCURORUM VIRORUM’ (1516-17).