The name of "mother" also filled him with reverence.
True, his birth had cost his own mother her life, but he had long possessed a distinct idea of her nature and being, and had given her precisely the same position which, in the early days of his school life, the Virgin Mary had occupied.
To induce another to break a vow made to his mother would have been sinful.

But a brief reflection changed his mind.
Were there not circumstances in which the Bible itself commanded a man to leave father and mother?
Had not Jesus Christ made the surrender of every old relation and the following after him the duty of those who were to become his disciples?
What was the meaning of the words the Saviour had uttered to his august mother, "Woman, what have I to do with thee ?" except it was commanded to turn even from the mother when religion was at stake?
Many another passage of Scripture had strengthened the courage of the young Bible student when at last, with a look of intelligence, he pledged Wolf, and remarking, "How could I venture the attempt to lead you to break so sacred an oath ?" instantly brought forward every plea that a son who, in religious matters, followed a different path from his mother could allege in his justification.
A short time before, in Brussels, Wolf had seen a superior of the new Society of Jesus, whose members were now appearing everywhere as defenders of the violently assailed papacy, seek to win back to Catholicism the son of evangelical parents with the very same arguments.
He told his friend this, and also expressed the belief that the Jesuit, too, had spoken in good faith.
Erasmus shrugged his shoulders, saying "Doubtless there are many mansions in our Father's house, but who will blame us if we left the dilapidated old one, where our liberty was restricted and our consciences were burdened, and preferred the new one, in which man is subject to no other mortal, but only to the plain words of the Bible and to the judge in his own breast?
If we prefer this mansion, which stands open to every one whose heart the old one oppresses, to the ruinous one of former days----" "Yet," interrupted Wolf, "you must say to yourselves that you leave behind in the old one much which the new one lacks, no matter with how many good things you may equip it.

The history of our religion and its development does not belong to your new home--only to the old one." "We stand upon it as every newer thing rests on the older," replied Erasmus eagerly.

"What we cast aside and refuse to take into the new home with us is not the holy faith, but merely its deformity, abasement, and falsification." "Call it so," replied Wolf calmly.

"I have heard others name and interpret differently what you probably have in mind while using these harsh epithets.