Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/81

 Germany before the Protestant Revolt 43 The scholas tic theolo- gians. his enemy; another, while his fellows were fighting, ran away with expedition and success ; another, on the point of being hanged, escaped, through the aid of some saintly friend of thieves, and lived to relieve a few more of those whom he believed to be overburdened with their wealth. . . . These various forms of foolishness so pervade the whole life of Christians that even the priests themselves find no objection to admitting, not to say fostering, them, since they do not fail to perceive how many tidy little sums accrue to them from such sources. But what if some odious philoso- pher should chime in and say, as is quite true : "You will not die badly if you live well. You are redeeming your sins when you add to the sum that you contribute a hearty detestation of evil doers : then you may spare yourself tears, vigils, invo- cations, fasts, and all that kind of life. You may rely upon any saint to aid you when once you begin to imitate his life." As for the theologians, perhaps the less said the better on this gloomy and dangerous theme, since they are a style of man who show themselves exceeding supercilious and irritable unless they can heap up six hundred conclusions about you and force you to recant ; and if you refuse, they promptly brand you as a heretic, — for it is their custom to terrify by their thunderings those whom they dislike. It must be confessed that no other group of fools are so reluc- tant to acknowledge Folly's benefits toward them, although I have many titles to their gratitude, for I make them so in love with themselves that they seem to be happily exalted to the third heaven, whence they look down with something like pity upon all other mortals, wandering about on the earth like mere cattle. Then they hedge themselves about with such an array of Scholastic magisterial definitions, conclusions, corollaries, propositions dls P utatlon& explicate and implicate, and do so abound in subterfuges, that chains forged by Vulcan himself could not hold them so firm but that they could escape by one of those distinc- tions which enable them to cut all knots as easily as with a two-edged ax, so readily do they think up and rattle out new and prodigious terms and expressions.