Everything was now changed in Basle. The leaders of the papal party, priests, scholars, and monks, prepared to leave it. Not however, from any fear of bodily harm, but from their dislike to the Protestant faith. Many of them were courteously entreated to remain; Erasmus especially-the most eminent person who withdrew from Basle at this time. In writing to his friend Pirkheimer, a little before his departure he says: "OEcolampadius made me the offer of his sincere friendship; which I accepted on condition that he would allow me to differ from him on certain points. He would have persuaded me not to leave Basle. I told him that it was with reluctance I quitted a city, which, on so many accounts, was highly agreeable to me; but that I could not longer support the odium to which a continuance there would expose me, as I should be thought to approve the public proceedings of the place." Soon after this friendly interview he took his departure and removed to Friburg. His salaries, his credit with the great, with the pope and the papal party, were in danger if he remained any longer in that polluted residence. But so prone was this great man of letters to sarcasm and jesting, that he could not restrain his wit against the superstition of his own party. "So many were the insults heaped upon the images and crucifixes," he says, "as to make it strange, that those holy saints, who had been wont to display such prodigies of power on very slight offenses, should have refrained, in this important emergency, from the display of their miraculous energies."
New professors, to supply the place of Erasmus and others, were invited to fill the vacant chairs in the university, and in particular, Myconius, Phrygio, Munster, and Grynaeus. At the same time an ecclesiastical order, or confession of faith, was published, which is considered one of the most precious documents of this epoch.