The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

education among those who so vehemently reviled him) it may be
considered, whether in passing through so very rough a sea, it was not next
to impossible for him not to beat the insulting waves till they foamed again.
Erasmus tells us 'that he perceived, the better any man was, the more he
relished the writings of Luther;' 22 that his very enemies allowed him to be
a man of good life; that he seemed to him to have in his breast certain
eminent Evangelical sparks; that it was plain that some condemned things
in Luther's writings which in Augustine and Bernard passed for pious and
orthodox." 23
Kidder.
Bishop Kidder, in the same interesting collection from which we
have just quoted, alludes to the "Confessions of Adversaries," which
Bellarmine has presented as the thirteenth mark of the Church. This
weapon he turns against the great Romish author: "As for Martin Luther,
whatever the Romanists say of him now, yet certain it is that Erasmus, who
I hope will pass with Cardinal Bellarmine for a Catholic, who lived in his
time, gives a better account of him. In his letter to the Cardinal of York,
speaking of Luther, he says: 24 'His life is approved by all men, and this is
no slight ground of prejudice in his favor, that such was the integrity of his
morals, that his enemies could find nothing to reproach him with.' Again,
in a letter to Melanchthon: 25 'All men among us approve the life of
Luther.'" 26
Bossuet.
Even Bossuet, the eagle of Meaux, is obliged, at the beginning of his
ferocious assault on Protestantism, to concede something in regard to
Luther's gifts: “In the time of Luther, the most violent rupture, and greatest
apostasy occurred, which had perhaps ever been seen in Christendom. The
two parties, who have called themselves reformed, have alike recognized
him as the author of this new Reformation. It is not alone his followers, the
Lutherans, who have lavished upon him the highest praises. Calvin
frequently admires his virtues, his magnanimity, his constancy, the
incomparable
22 Erasm. Epist. ad Albert. Episc., etc., pp. 584, 585.
23 Bellarmine's Notes of the Church Examined and Refuted, London, 1840, p. 251.
24 Erasm. Ep., lib. xi., Ep. 1.
25 Ep, lib. vii., Ep. 43.
26 Bellarmine's Notes Examined, etc., p. 312.