Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/21

 1920 ERASMUS 13 perhaps be highly rated now, but his exegesis was always reverent and sometimes new. The novelties, however, when seized upon by those who had not the writer's own regard for the authority of the church, were sometimes dangerously used. His discussion of our Lord's treatment of divorce, for instance, fitted in too well with the licence of the day not to be carried further, and much of later discussion may be put down to their influence.^ For instance in Exeter diocese Bishop Alley found some malcontents who denied the descent of Christ into Hades, and their opinions, he says, ' they ground upon Erasmus and the Germans in the first place even if more especially upon the authority of Mr. Calvin and Mr. Bullinger '.^ But there was solid work and reverent love of the gospel in the work, and it did not fail of its result. Erasmus was its author, but the method he followed and the spirit in which he wrote were alike those of his early teachers, the pious and laborious Brethren of the Common Lot. And so the dying middle ages were linked by their greatest product to the founda- tion of the Reformation age itself. In August 1516 Erasmus left England for the Continent ; Calais, Antwerp, Brussels, Antwerp again, received him ; a short trip to England in March and April in 1517, during which he visited Rochester, brought him again to his most congenial friends : in May and June he passed over again to Antwerp (the home of the court), and in July 1517 he settled at Louvain, surrounded by his beloved books and all his belongings. Here he made his home, with occasional moves to Antwerp and a longer journey to Basle for the purpose of editing his most important works (May to August 1518). Then he returned to Louvain ; illness met him on the way and made him wish for rest, which was, however, denied him by controversies and fear of attacks more or less malicious. Henceforth his health caused him more real anxiety and increased his fastidiousness. But by this time the Lutheran tragedy had begun its tumultuous course, sometimes rapid, sometimes slow, but always full of discord and disturbance. Louvain itself reflected the movement of the busier world outside. It was the home of conservatism, which should not always be interpreted as obscurantism, for there were also better tendencies of thought to be reckoned with. It was the time when the professorships of the Three Languages were founded to the glory and the gain of the great university, which from time to time, and not least in these most modern days, has drawn to itself the attention of the world. Hebrew, Greek, and Latin ' See the evidence I quoted on opinions of continental divines upon divorce, in the Report of the Royal Commission upon Divorce, Minutes o/ Evidence, iii. 283 f. indebted to Dr. Gibson's Thirty-Nine Articles, i. 161.
 * See Strype, Annals (Oxford ed., 1824), vol. i, pt. i, p. 519. For the reference I am