guage; they even became of a sudden scholars of divinity and delivered lectures on theological subjects. Luther did not shrink from a formal alliance with the most violent of these enemies of the existing order, the gifted but utterly corrupt Ulrich von Hutten, who at that time together with Franz von Sickingen planned a revolution against the Emperor.[1]
This was indeed a remarkable alliance. Prof. Paulsen's comment on it is worth quoting: "The humanists offered their assistance to the monk whose controversies they had shortly before despised as a monkish quarrel. 'Evangelical liberty' became their war-cry instead of 'learning and humanity'. It is only through this alliance that Luther's cause, which had begun as a 'monkish quarrel', became that tremendous revolutionary movement which unhinged the gates of the Church. A reminder of humanism is that naturalism contained in the pure gospel, that addition which appears so strange in Luther's writings, when now and then he represents the works of the flesh as divine commandments and continence as well nigh a rebellion against God's word and will: almost as if the emancipation of the flesh was to be realized through the gospel of Christ. Of course this must not be understood as though these elements had not existed in Luther's nature, in his views and sentiments, but it was only under the influence of humanism that they developed. Under different circumstances they might have remained latent."[2] Luther and Loyola have often been contrasted, the one as the leader of the Protestant Revolution, the other as prominent in the counter-