and profane, together, as if it were your chief aim to prevent the tempest from ever becoming calm, whereas it is my great- est desire that it should. What you owe to me and what you have filched from me, I do not inquire. Whatever it is, my loss is but a private matter, and what grieves me is the public calamity: all this incurable confusion which we owe to noth- ing but to your barren genius, not amenable to the counsels of your best friends but easily turned in any direction by the most foolish swindlers. I know not whom you have saved from the power of darkness; whoever the ingrates are you ought to turn your dagger-pen against them rather than against the men who argue so temperately against you. I would wish Tyou a better disposition were you not so marvelously well L s atisfied with the one you have. Wish me any curse you will except your disposition, unless the Lord change it for you.
730. MELANCHTHON TO JOACHIM CAMERARIUS AT BAM-
BERG. CR., i, 793. (Wittenberg), April 11, 1526.
Have you ever read anything more bitterly written than Erasmus's Hyperaspites? He is certainly a viper.* How Luther will take it, I do not know, but I have adjured the man again by everything sacred that if he wishes to reply he will conduct the disputation briefly, simply and without abuse. When Luther's book* was published I said at once that this contention would result in the cruelest recriminations. This has happened, and yet I think that in the second part of his work Erasmus has been the more vulgar. He loads me with undeserved reproach, ascribing the more odious part of Luther's work to me, but I have decided to take no notice of this injustice, and I wish that Luther, too, would be silent, for I hoped that with advancing years he would grow used to these things and be somewhat milder, but I see that he is becoming more and more vehement when confronted with such battles and such opponents. The matter causes me great anguish of mind. Unless God shall take note of this tumult and preserve us, I fear that we shall not be able to get out
^Aspis. Cf. supra, no. 729.
- /.#., On the Bondage of the Will, to whkk the HyperospUes was a reply.
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