Luther to Nicholas Hausmann, january 1526:
I expect the same or worse from Erasmus as from Duke George. That reptile will feel himself taken by the throat and will not be moved by my moderation. God grant that I be mistaken, but I know the man’s nature; he is an instrument of Satan unless God change him.
Luther to Georg Spalatin, march 1526
. . . that enraged reptile, Erasmus of Rotterdam. How much eloquence will this vainglorious beast exercise in trying to destroy Luther?
Erasmus to Luther,april 1526
The whole world knows your nature; truly you have so guided your pen that you have written against no one more rabidly, and (what is more detestable) more maliciously than against me. . . . that same admirable ferocity which you formerly used against [Bishop John] Fisher and against Cochlaeus, who challenged you to it and provoked you by their reviling, you now use against my book On the Free Will, which argued politely. How do your scurrilous reproaches and mendacious charges that I am atheist, an Epicurean, a skeptic about Christianity, besides many other things which you say you pass over, help the argument one way or the other? I bear your accusations with tolerable calmness because my conscience does not charge me with one of them. Did I not believe in God, Christianity and revealed religion, I should not wish to live a day longer. If you plead your cause with your customary vehemence but without your furious reviling, you would provoke fewer men to come out against you; more than a third part of your book is taken up with such invective since you give rein to your temper. Your rage itself shows that you have the worst of the argument . . . what does terribly pain me, and all good men, is that your arrogant, insolent, rebellious nature has cast the world into deadly strife, that you have opposed good men and lovers of letters with a set of malignant Pharisees, and that you have armed the wicked and turbulent to rebel; in short, that you so treat the evangelical cause as to confound all things, sacred and profane, together, as if it were your chief aim to prevent the tempest from ever becoming calm, whereas it is my greatest desire that it should. . . . what grieves me is the public calamity: all this incurable confusion which we owe to nothing 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.
Erasmus to Luther, March 1527:
What torments me, and any decent person with me, is that because of that arrogant, insolent, seditious temperament of yours you throw the whole world into deadly hostile camps; you make good men and lovers of the humanities vulnerable to certain raving Pharisees; you arm wicked men and those eager for revolt; in short, you treat the cause of the gospel in such a way as to reduce everything, holy or unholy, to utter confusion, as if you deliberately intended that this storm should never reach a pleasant outcome, which is the goal at which I have always aimed. . . . It is the public calamity that torments me and the total and inextricable confusion which derives solely from your uncontrollable personality.
Erasmus to St. Thomas More, March 1527
But what weapons can you use to dispossess someone who will not accept anything except Holy Scripture interpreted according to his own rules?
Luther to Justus Jonas, October 1527
At last you paint that Erasmus of yours in his true colors, and recognize him as a viper with deadly stings, though you used formerly to speak of him in many terms of praise. I am glad that the reading of this one book, the Hyperaspistes, has brought you so far and changed your opinion of him.
Luther to Justus Jonas, November 1527
I have not yet read Erasmus or the sacramentarians except about three-quarters of Zwingli’s book. Judases as they are . . . Would that Erasmus and the sacramentarians might feel the anguish of my heart for a quarter of an hour; I can safely say that they would be converted and saved thereby . . .
Luther to James Montanus, May 1529
He does not publish a single book without showing the impotence of his mind, or, rather, the pain of the wounds he has received. But I despise him, nor shall I honor the fellow by arguing with him any more . . . I shall mention Erasmus only as one speaks of a third person, condemning rather than refuting his ideas. He is a light-minded man, scoffing at all religion, after the fashion of his own dear Lucian does, and never writes seriously unless he is setting down calumnies and slanders.