A letter, intended to be reassuring, written from Augsburg on September 11 by Brenz, who was somewhat more communicative than Melanchthon, and addressed to his friend Isenmann, who was anxious concerning the concessions being offered, may serve further to elucidate the policy of Melanchthon and Brenz. Brenz writes: “If you consider the matter carefully you will see that our proposals are such as to make us appear to have yielded to a certain extent; whereas, in substance, we have made no concessions whatsoever. This they plainly understand. What, may I ask, are the Popish fasts so long as we hold the doctrine of freedom?” The real object of the last concession, he had already pointed out, was to avoid giving the Emperor and his Court the impression that they were “preachers of sensuality.” The jurisdiction conceded to the bishops will not harm us so long as they “agree to our Via media and conditions”; they themselves will then become new men, thanks to the Evangel; “for always and everywhere we insist upon the proviso of freedom and purity of doctrine. Having this, what reason would you have to grumble at the jurisdiction of the bishops?”[1114] It will, on the contrary, be of use to us, and will serve as a buffer against the wilfulness of secular dignitaries, who oppress our churches with heavy burdens. “Besides, it is not to be feared that our opponents will agree to the terms.” The main point is, so Melanchthon’s confidential fellow-labourer concludes, that only thus can we hope to secure “toleration for our doctrine.”[1115]
When Melanchthon penned this confession only a few days had elapsed since Luther, in response to anxious letters received from Augsburg, had intervened with a firm hand and spoken out plainly against the concessions, and any further attempts at a diplomatic settlement.[1116]
In obedience to these directions Melanchthon began to withdraw more and more from the position he had taken up.
The most favourable proposals of his opponents were no longer entertained by him, and he even refused to fall in with the Emperor’s suggestion that Catholics living in Protestant territories should be left free to practise their religion. The Elector of Saxony’s divines, together with Melanchthon, in a memorandum to their sovereign, declared, on this occasion, that it was not sufficient for preachers to preach against the Mass, but that the Princes also must refuse to sanction it, and must forbid it. “Were we to say that Princes might abstain from forbidding it, and that preachers only were to declaim against it, one could well foresee what [small] effect the doctrine and denunciations of the preachers would have.”[1117] “The theologians,” remarks Janssen, “thus gave it distinctly to be understood that the new doctrine could not endure without the aid of the secular authority.”[1118] Hence, at that decisive moment, the Protestant Princes proclaimed intolerance of Catholics as much a matter of conscience as the confiscation of Church property. To the demand of the Emperor for restitution of the temporalities, the Princes, supported by the theologians, answered, that “they did not consider themselves bound to obey, since this matter concerned their conscience, against which there ran no prescription” (on the part of those who had been despoiled).[1119]
Thus, with Melanchthon’s knowledge and approval, the two principal factors in the whole Reformation, viz. intolerance and robbery of Church property, played their part even here at the turning-point of German history.
On his return from the Coburg to Wittenberg, as already described (p. 45 f.), Luther in his sermons showed how the Evangel which he proclaimed had to be preached, even at the expense of war and universal desolation: “The cry now is, that, had the Evangel not been preached, things would never have fallen out thus, but everything would have remained calm and peaceful. No, my friend, but things will improve; Christ speaks: ‘I have more things to say to you and to judge’; the fact is you must leave this preaching undisturbed, else there shall not remain to you one stick nor one stone upon another, and you may say: ‘These words are not mine, but the words of the Father.’” (cp. John viii. 26).[1120]
Yet, at the time of the Diet of Augsburg, Luther, for all his inexorable determination, was not unmindful of the temporal assistance promised by the Princes. He hinted at this with entire absence of reserve in a letter, not indeed to Melanchthon, who was averse to war, but to Spalatin: “Whatever the issue [of the Diet] may be, do not fear the victors and their craft. Luther is still at large and so is the Macedonian” (i.e. Philip of Hesse, whom Melanchthon had thus nicknamed after the warlike Philip of Macedonia). The “Macedonian” seemed to Luther a sort of “Ismael,” like unto Agar’s son, whom Holy Scripture had described as a wild man, whose hand is raised against all (Gen. xvi. 12). Luther was aware that Philip had quitted the Diet in anger and was now nursing his fury, as it were, in the desert. “He is at large,” he says in biblical language, “and thence may arise prudence to meet cunning and Ismael to oppose the enemy. Be strong and act like men. There was nothing to fear if they fought with blunted weapons.”[1121] Philip’s offer of a refuge in Hesse had helped to render Luther more defiant.[1122]
Exhortations such as these increased the unwillingness of his friends at Augsburg to reach any settlement by way of real concessions. All hopes of a peaceful outcome of the negotiations were thus doomed.
The Reichstagsabschied which finally, on November 19, 1530, brought Parliament to an end, witnessed to the hopelessness of any lasting peace; it required, however, that the bishoprics, monasteries, and churches which had been destroyed should be re-erected, and that the parishes still faithful to Catholicism should enjoy immunity under pain of the ban of the Empire.[1123]
Looking back at Melanchthon’s attitude at the Diet, we can understand the severe strictures of recent historians.
“We cannot get rid of the fact,” writes Georg Ellinger, Melanchthon’s latest Protestant biographer, “that, on the whole, his attitude at the Diet of Augsburg does not make a pleasing impression.” “That the apprehension of seeing the realisation of his principles frustrated led him to actions which can in no wise be approved, may be freely admitted.” It is true that Ellinger emphasises very strongly the “mitigating circumstances,” but he also remarks: “He had no real comprehension of the importance of the ecclesiastical forms involved [in his concessions], and this same lack of penetration served him badly even later. The method by which he attempted to put his plans into execution displays nothing of greatness but rather that petty slyness which seeks to overreach opponents by the use of ambiguous words.... He had recourse to this means in the hope of thus arriving more easily at his goal.” His “little tricks,” he proceeds, “at least delayed the business for a while,” to the manifest advantage of the Protestant cause.[1124] He candidly admits that Melanchthon, both before and after the Diet of Augsburg, owing to his weak and not entirely upright character, was repeatedly caught “having recourse to the subterfuges of a slyness not far removed from dissimulation.”[1125] In proof of this he instances the expedient invented by Melanchthon for the purpose of evading the conference with Zwingli at Marburg which was so distasteful to him. “The Elector was to behave as though Melanchthon had, in a letter, requested permission to attend such a conference, and had been refused it. Melanchthon would then allege this to the Landgrave of Hesse [who was urging him to attend the conference] ‘in order that His Highness may be pacified by so excellent an excuse.’”[1126] Ellinger, most impartially, also adduces other devices to which Melanchthon had recourse at a later date.[1127]
The conduct of the leader of the Protestant party at the Diet of Augsburg, more particularly his concern in the document addressed to the Legate Campeggio, is stigmatised as follows by Karl Sell, the Protestant historian. “This tone, this sudden reduction of the whole world-stirring struggle to a mere wrangle about trifles, and this recognition, anything but religious, of the Roman Church, comes perilously near conscious deception. Did Melanchthon really believe it possible to outwit diplomats so astute by such a blind? In my opinion it is unfair to reproach him with treason or even servility; what he was guilty of was merely duplicity.” Campeggio, Sell continues, of these and similar advances made by the Protestant spokesmen, wrote: “They answer as heretics are wont, viz. in cunning and ambiguous words.”[1128]
Even in the “Theologische Realenzyklopädie des Protestantismus” a suppressed note of disapproval of Melanchthon’s “mistakes and weaknesses” is sounded. His attitude at the Diet, the authors of the article on Melanchthon say, “was not so pleasing as his learned labours on the Augsburg Confession”; “a clear insight into the actual differences” as well as a “dignified and firm attitude” was lacking; “this applies particularly to his letter to the Papal Legate.”[1129]
We can understand how Döllinger, in his work “Die Reformation,” after referring to Melanchthon’s palpable self-contradictions, speaks of his solemn appeal to the doctrine of St. Augustine as an intentional and barefaced piece of deception, an untruth “which he deemed himself allowed.” Döllinger, without mincing matters, speaks of his “dishonesty,” and relentlessly brands his misleading statements; they leave us to choose between two alternatives, either he was endeavouring to deceive and trick the Catholics, or he had surrendered the most important and distinctive Protestant doctrines, and was ready to lend a hand in re-establishing the Catholic teaching.[1130]
Luther, so far as we are aware, never blamed his friend, either publicly or in his private letters, for his behaviour during this crisis, nor did he ever accuse him of “treason to the Evangelical cause.”[1131] He only expresses now and then his dissatisfaction at the useless protraction of the proceedings and scolds him jokingly “for his fears, timidity, cares and lamentations.”[1132] No real blame is contained in the words he addressed to Melanchthon: “So long as the Papacy subsists among us, our doctrine cannot subsist.... Thank God that you are having nothing from it.” “I know that in treating of episcopal authority you have always insisted on the Gospel proviso, but I fear that later our opponents will say we were perfidious and fickle (‘perfidos et inconstantes’) if we do not keep to what they want.... In short, all these transactions on doctrine displease me, because nothing comes of them so long as the Pope does not do away with his Papacy.”[1133] A fortnight later Luther cordially blessed his friend, who was then overwhelmed with trouble: “I pray you, my Philip, not to crucify yourself in anxiety over the charges which are raised against you, either verbally or in writing [by some of ours who argue], that you are going too far.... They do not understand what is meant by the episcopal authority which was to be re-established, and do not rightly estimate the conditions which we attach to it. Would that the bishops had accepted it on these conditions! But they have too fine a nose where their own interests are concerned and refuse to walk into the trap.”[1134]
A closer examination of the bent of Melanchthon’s mind reveals a trait, common to many of Luther’s learned followers at that time, which helps to explain his attitude at Augsburg.
The real foundations of theology were never quite clear to them because their education had been one-sidedly Humanistic, and they had never studied theology proper. They were fond of speaking and writing of the Church, of Grace and Faith, but their ideas thereon were strangely subjective, so much so that they did not even agree amongst themselves. Hence, in their dealings with Catholic theologians the latter often failed to understand them. The fruitlessness of the conferences was frequently due solely to this; though greatly prejudiced in Luther’s favour, they still considered it possible for the chasm between the old and the new to be bridged over, and longed earnestly for such a consummation to be secured by some yielding on the Catholic side; they were unwilling to break away from the Church Universal, and, besides, they looked askance at the moral consequences of the innovations and feared still greater confusion and civil war.
That this was the spirit which animated Melanchthon is evident from some of the facts already recorded.
He had nothing more at heart than to secure the atmosphere essential for his studies and for the furtherance of intellectual, particularly Humanistic, culture, and to smooth the way for its general introduction into Germany. His knowledge of theology had been acquired, as it were, incidentally through his intercourse with Luther and his study of Scripture; the latter, however, had been influenced by his Humanism and, speaking generally, he contented himself in selecting in the Bible certain general moral truths which might serve as a rule of life. He indeed studied the Fathers more diligently than Luther, the Greek Fathers proving particularly attractive to him; it was, however, chiefly a study of form, of culture, and of history, and as regards theology little more than mere dilettantism. His insight into the practical life of the Church left much to be desired, otherwise the Anabaptist movement at Zwickau would not have puzzled him as it did and left him in doubt as to whether it came from God or the devil. His ignorance of the gigantic intellectual labours of the Middle Ages in the domain of theology made itself felt sensibly. He knew even less of Scholasticism than did Luther, yet, after having acquired a nodding acquaintance with it in its most debased form, he, as a good pupil of Erasmus, proceeded to condemn it root and branch. Every page of his writings proves that his method of thought and expression, with its indecision, its groping, its dependence on echoes from the classics, was far removed from the masterpieces of learning and culture of the best days of the Middle Ages. Yet he fancies himself entitled to censure Scholasticism and to write in Luther’s style with a conceit only matched by his ignorance: “You see what thick darkness envelops the commentaries of the ancients and the whole doctrine of our opponents, how utterly ignorant they are of what sin really is, of the purpose of the law, of the blessings of the Gospel, of prayer, and of man’s refuge when assailed by mental terrors.”[1135] The “mental terrors,” referred to here and elsewhere, belonged to Luther’s world of thought. This touch of mysticism, the only one to be found occasionally in Melanchthon’s works, scarcely availed to render his theology any the more profound.[1136]
Hence, in fairness, his attempts at mediation when at the Diet of Augsburg may be regarded as largely due to ignorance and to his prejudice against Catholic theology.
We must, however, also take into consideration the Humanist phantom of union and peace for the benefit of the commonweal and particularly of scholarship; likewise his frequently expressed aversion for public disorder, and his fears of a decline of morals and of worse things to come. Then only shall we be in a position to understand the attitude of the man upon whose shoulders the burden of the matter so largely rested. The trait chiefly to be held accountable for his behaviour, viz. his peculiar, one-sided Humanistic education, was well described by Luther later on when Melanchthon was attacked by Cordatus and Schenk for his tendency to water down dogma. Luther then spoke of the “Erasmian intermediaries” at whose rough handling he was not in the least surprised.
Luther had good reason for valuing highly the theological services which Melanchthon rendered him by placing his ideas before the world in a form at once clearer and more dignified. Points of theology and practice which he supplied to his friend as raw material, Melanchthon returned duly worked-up and polished. Luther’s views assumed practical shape in passing through Melanchthon’s hands.[1137]
At the outset the latter readily accepted all the doctrines of his “præceptor observandissimus.” In the first edition of the “Loci” (December, 1521) he made his own even Luther’s harshest views, those, namely, concerning man’s unfreedom and God’s being the author of evil.[1138] The faithful picture of his doctrine which Luther there found so delighted him, that he ventured to put the “Loci” on a level with the canon of Holy Scripture (vol. ii., p. 239).
As years passed by, Melanchthon allowed himself to deviate more and more from Luther’s teaching. The latter’s way of carrying every theological thesis to its furthest limit, affrighted him. He yearned for greater freedom of action, was desirous of granting a reasonable amount of room to doubt, and was not averse to learning a thing or two even from opponents. It was his Humanistic training which taught him to put on the brake and even to introduce several far-reaching amendments into Luther’s theories. It was his Humanism which made him value the human powers and the perfectibility of the soul, and thus to doubt whether Luther was really in the right in his denial of freedom. Such a doubt we find faintly expressed by him soon after he had perused the “Diatribe” published by Erasmus in 1524.[1139] Luther’s reply (“De servo arbitrio”), to which Melanchthon officially accorded his praise, failed to convince him of man’s lack of freedom in the natural order. In 1526, in his lectures on Colossians (printed in 1528), he openly rejected the view that God was the author of sin, stood up for freedom in all matters of civil justice, and declared that in such things it was quite possible to avoid gross sin.[1140] In his new edition of the “Loci” in 1527 he abandoned determinism and the denial of free-will, and likewise the severer form of the doctrine of predestination,[1141] such as he had still championed in the 1525 edition, but which, he had now come to see, was at variance with the proper estimate of man and human action.
Neither could Melanchthon ever bring himself to speak of human reason, as compared to faith, in quite the same language of disrespect as Luther.
That, on the occasion of the Visitation, he began to lay stress on works as well as faith, has already been pointed out.[1142] In this connection it is curious to note how, with his usual caution and prudence where Luther and his more ardent followers were concerned, he recommends that works should be represented as praiseworthy only when penance was being preached, but not, for instance, when Justification was the subject, as, here, Lutherans, being accustomed to hear so much of the “sola fides,” might well take offence.[1143]
In the matter of Justification, he, like Luther, made everything to rest on that entirely outward covering over of man by Christ’s merits received through faith, or rather through confidence of salvation.[1144] Indeed, Luther’s greatest service, according to him, lay in his having made this discovery. It was necessary, so he taught, that Christian perfection should be made to consist solely in one’s readiness, whenever oppressed by the sense of guilt, to find consolation by wrapping oneself up in the righteousness of Christ. Then the heart is “fearless, though our conscience and the law continue to cry within us that we are unworthy.” In other words, we must “take it as certain that we have a God Who is gracious to us for Christ’s sake, be our works what they may.”[1145]
It was his advocacy of this doctrine, as the very foundation of sanctification, which earned for him the striking commendation we find in a letter written by Luther to Jonas in 1529. Melanchthon had been of greater service to the Church and the cause of holiness than “a thousand fellows of the ilk of Jerome, Hilarion or Macarius, those Saints of ceremonies and celibacy who were not worthy to loose the laces of his boots nor—to boast a little—of yours [Jonas’s], of Pomeranus [Bugenhagen], or even of mine. For what have these self-constituted Saints and all the wifeless bishops done which can compare with one year’s work of Philip’s, or with his ‘Loci’?”[1146]
Yet this very work was to bear additional testimony to Melanchthon’s abandonment of several of Luther’s fundamental doctrines.[1147]
In 1530 and 1531 Melanchthon passed through a crisis, and from that time forward a greater divergency in matters of doctrine became apparent between the two friends. Even in his work for the Diet in 1530 Melanchthon had assumed a position of greater independence, and this grew more marked when he began to plan a revised edition of his “Loci.” He himself was later to acknowledge that his views had undergone a change, though, in order to avoid unpleasantness, he preferred to make out that the alteration was less far-reaching than it really was. “You know,” he wrote to an ardent admirer of Luther’s, “that I put certain things concerning predestination, determination of the will, necessity of obedience to the law, and grievous sin, less harshly than does Luther. In all these things, as I well know, Luther’s teaching is the same as mine, but there are some unlearned persons, who, without at all understanding them, pin their faith on certain rude expressions of his.”[1148] But was Luther’s teaching really “the same”? The truth is, that, on the points instanced, “Luther had not only in earlier days taught a doctrine different from that of Melanchthon, but continued to cherish the same to the very end of his life.”[1149] It fitted, however, the cowardly character of Melanchthon to conceal as much as possible these divergencies.
It is worth our while to examine a little more closely the nature of the doctrinal differences between Luther and Melanchthon, seeing that the latter—to quote the Protestant theologian Gustav Krüger—was the real “creator of evangelical theology” and the “founder of the evangelical Church system.”[1150]
As a matter of fact Melanchthon had already shaped out a course of his own by the modifications which he had seen fit to introduce in the original Confession of Augsburg.
Not only did he omit whatever displeased him in the new doctrine, but he also formulated it in a way which manifestly deviated from Luther’s own. Human co-operation, for instance, plays a part much greater than with Luther. Unlike Luther, he did not venture to assert plainly that the gift of faith was the work of God independent of all human co-operation. Concerning the “law,” too, he put forward a different opinion, which, however, was not much better than Luther’s.[1151] In 1530, so says Fr. Loofs, one of the most esteemed Protestant historians of dogma, “he was no longer merely an interpreter of Luther’s ideas.”[1152] “Yet he had not yet arrived at a finished theology of his own even in 1531, when he published the ‘editio princeps’ of the ‘Augustana’ and the ‘Apologia.’”[1153] One of the first important products of the change was the Commentary on Romans which he published in 1532. Then, in 1535, appeared the revised edition of the “Loci,” which, in its new shape, apart from mere modifications of detail, was to serve as his measure for the last twenty-five years of his life. “The ‘Loci’ of 1535 embody the distinctive Melanchthonian theology.”[1154]
“Thus, even before the death of Luther, and before altered circumstances had restricted Melanchthon’s influence, the stamp which the latter had impressed upon the principles of the Reformation had already become the heritage of a large circle of evangelical theologians.”[1155]
Leaving aside the idea of an unconditional Divine predestination, he spoke in both these works of the “promissio universalis” of salvation. The Holy Ghost—such is his view on the question of conversion—by means of the “Word” produces faith in those who do not resist. The human will, which does not reject, but accepts grace, forms, together with the “Word of God” and the “Holy Ghost,” one of the three causes (“tres causæ concurrentes”) of conversion. It is really to Luther’s deterministic doctrine that the author of the “Loci” alludes in the 1535 edition: “The Stoics’ ravings about fate must find no place in the Church.”[1156]
Human co-operation in the work of salvation came to be designated Synergism. The Protestant historian of dogma mentioned above points out “that, by his adoption of Synergism, Melanchthon forsook both the Lutheran tradition and his own earlier standpoint.” The assumption of an unconditional Divine predestination, such as we find it advocated by Luther, Zwingli, Bucer, Calvin and others, was here “for the first time thrown overboard by one of the Protestant leaders.”[1157] The same author, after commenting on Melanchthon’s new exposition of justification and the law in relation to the Gospel, declares that here, too, Melanchthon had exploited “only a part of Luther’s thought and had distorted some of the most precious truths we owe to the Reformation.”[1158]
This same charge we not seldom hear brought against Melanchthon by up-to-date Protestant theologians. In the school of Albert Ritschl it is, for instance, usual to say that he narrowed the ideas of Luther, particularly in his conception of faith and of the Church. The truth is that Melanchthon really did throw overboard certain radical views which had been cherished by Luther, particularly in his early days. The faith which is required for salvation he comes more and more to take as faith in all the articles of revelation, and not so much as a mere faith and confidence in the forgiveness of sins and personal salvation; “the first place is accorded no longer to trust but to doctrine,”[1159] though, as will appear immediately, he did not feel quite sure of his position. In his conception of the Church, too, he was more disposed to see “an empirical reality and to insist on its doctrinal side,”[1160] instead of looking on the Church, as Luther did, viz. as the “invisible band of all who confess the Gospel.”[1161] Johannes Haussleiter, the Protestant editor of the Disputations held under Melanchthon from 1546 onwards, thus feels justified in saying that, “it was in Melanchthon’s school that the transition was effected ... from a living confession born of faith and moulded with the assistance of theology, to a firm, hard and rigid law of doctrine.... This, from the point of view of history, spelt retrogression.... If it was possible for such a thing to occur at Wittenberg one generation after Luther’s ringing testimony in favour of the freedom of a Christian Man, what might not be feared for the future?”[1162]
Carl Müller is also at pains to show that it was Melanchthon who imbued the first generation of theologians—for whose formation he, rather than Luther, was responsible—with the idea of a Church which should be the guardian of that “pure doctrine” to be enshrined in formularies of faith. According to Müller it can never be sufficiently emphasised that the common idea is all wrong, and that “to Luther himself the Church never meant a congregation united by outward bonds or represented by a hierarchy or any other legal constitution, rule or elaborate creed, but nothing more than a union founded on the Gospel and its confession”; Luther, according to him, remained “on the whole” true to his ideal.[1163] How far the words “on the whole” are correct, will be seen when we come to discuss Luther’s changes of views.[1164]
Melanchthon betrays a certain indecision in his answer to the weighty question: Which faith is essential for salvation? At one time he takes this faith, according to the common Lutheran view, as trust in the mercy of God in Christ, at another, as assent to the whole revealed Word of God. Of his Disputations, which are the best witnesses we have to his attitude, the editor says aptly: “He alternates between two definitions of faith which he seems to consider of equal value, though to-day the difference between them cannot fail to strike one. He wavers, and yet he does so quite unconsciously.”[1165] The same editor also states that all attempts hitherto made to explain this phenomenon leave something to be desired. He himself makes no such attempt.
The true explanation, however, is not far to seek.
Melanchthon’s vacillation was the inevitable consequence of a false doctrinal standpoint. According to the principles of Luther and Melanchthon, faith, even as a mere assurance of salvation, should of itself avail to save a man and therefore to make him a member of the Church. Thus there is no longer any ground to require a preliminary belief or obedient acceptance of the whole substance of the Word of God; and yet some acceptance, at least implicit, of the whole substance of revelation, seems required of everyone who desires to be a Christian. This explains the efforts of both Luther and Melanchthon to discover ways and means for the reintroduction of this sort of faith. Their search was rendered the more difficult by the fact that here there was a “work” in the most real sense of the word, viz. willing, humble and cheerful acceptance of the law, and readiness to accord a firm assent to the truths revealed. The difficulty was even enhanced because in the last resort an authority is required, particularly by the unlearned, to formulate the doctrines and to point out what the true content of revelation is. In point of fact, however, every external guarantee of this sort had been discarded, at least theoretically, and no human authority could provide such an assurance. We seek in vain for a properly established authority capable of enacting with binding power what has to be believed, now that Luther and Melanchthon have rejected the idea of a visible Church and hierarchy, vicariously representing Christ. From this point of view it is easy to understand Melanchthon’s efforts—illogical though they were—to erect an edifice of “pure doctrine for all time” and his fondness for a “firm, hard and rigid law of doctrine.” His perplexity and wavering were only too natural. What reliable guarantee was Melanchthon in a position to offer—he who so frequently altered his teaching—that his own interpretation of Scripture exactly rendered the Divine Revelation, and thus constituted “pure doctrine” firm and unassailable? Modern theologians, when they find fault with Melanchthon for his assumption of authority and for his alteration of Luther’s teaching, have certainly some justification for their strictures.[1166]
As a matter of fact, however, Luther, as we shall see below, was every whit as undecided as Melanchthon as to what was to be understood by faith. Like his friend, Luther too alternates between faith as an assurance of salvation and faith as an assent to the whole Word of God. The only difference is, that, in his earlier years, his views concerning the freedom of each individual Christian to expound the Word of God and to determine what belonged to the body of faith, were much more radical than at a later period.[1167] Hence Melanchthon’s fondness for a “rigid law of doctrine” was more at variance with the earlier than with the later Luther. From the later Luther he differs favourably in this; not being under the necessity of having to explain away any earlier radical views, he was better able to sum up more clearly and systematically the essentials of belief, a task, moreover, which appealed to his natural disposition. Luther’s ideas on this subject are almost exclusively embodied in polemical writings written under the stress of great excitement; such statements only too frequently evince exaggerations of the worst sort, due to the passion and heat of the moment.
Of special importance was Melanchthon’s opposition to Luther on one of the most practical points of the Church’s life, viz. the doctrine of the Supper. At the Table which was intended to be the most sublime expression of the charity and union prevailing among the faithful, these two minds differed hopelessly.
It was useless for Luther to assure Melanchthon that the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament was so essential an article of faith that if a man did not believe in it he believed in no article whatever. From the commencement of the ‘thirties Melanchthon struck out his own course and became ever more convinced, that the doctrine of the Real Presence was not vouched for by the Bible. Once he had gone so far as to tell the Zwinglians that they had “to fear the punishment of Heaven” on account of their erroneous doctrine.[1168] After becoming acquainted with the “Dialogus” of [Œcolampadius, published in 1530, he, however, veered round to a denial of the Sacrament. Yet, with his superficial rationalism and his misinterpretation of certain patristic statements, [Œcolampadius had really adduced no peremptory objection against the general, traditional, literal interpretation of the words of consecration to which Melanchthon, as well as Luther, had till then adhered. In view of Melanchthon’s defective theological education little was needed to bring about an alteration in his views, particularly when the alteration was in the direction of a Humanistic softening of hard words, or seemed likely to provide a basis for conciliation. There was some foundation for his comparison of himself, in matters of theology, to the donkey in the Palm-Sunday mystery-play.[1169]
On the question of the Sacrament, the theory of the “Sacramentarians” came more and more to seem to him the true one.
Owing, however, to his timidity and the fear in which he stood of Luther, he did not dare to speak out. The “Loci” of 1535 is remarkably obscure in its teaching concerning the Sacrament, whilst, in a letter to Camerarius of the same year, he speaks of Luther’s view as “alien” to his own, which, however, he refuses to explain.[1170] Later the Cologne scheme of 1543 in which Bucer, to Luther’s great annoyance, evaded the question of the Real Presence, obtained Melanchthon’s approval. When, in 1540, Melanchthon made public a new edition of the Confession of Augsburg (“Confessio variata”), containing alterations of greater import than those of the previous editions, the new wording of the 10th Article was “Melanchthonian” in the sense that it failed to exclude “the doctrine either of Melanchthon, or of Bucer, or of Calvin on the Supper.”[1171] It was “Melanchthonian” also in that elasticity and ambiguity which has since become the model for so many Protestant formularies. In order to secure a certain outward unity it became usual to avoid any explicitness which might affright such as happened to have scruples. A Melanchthonian character was thus imparted to the theology which, with Melanchthon himself as leader, was to guard the heritage of Luther.
Melanchthon’s religious character naturally exhibits many points of contact with that of Luther.
Only to a limited extent, however, does this hold good of the “inward terrors.” Attempts have been made to prove that, like Luther, his more youthful friend believed he had experienced within him the salutary working of the new doctrine of Justification.[1172] But, though, in his “Apologia” to the Augsburg Confession and in other writings, he extols, as we have seen, this doctrine as alone capable of imparting strength and consolation in times of severe anxiety of conscience and spiritual desolation, and though he speaks of the “certamina conscientiæ,” and of the assurance of salvation in exactly the same way that Luther does, still this is no proof of his having experienced anything of the sort himself. The statements, which might be adduced in plenty from his private letters, lag very far behind Luther’s characteristic assurances of his own experience.
Of the enlightenment from on high by which he believed Luther’s divine mission as well as his own work as a teacher to be the result, of prayer for their common cause and of the joy in heaven over the work, labours and persecution they had endured, he can speak in language as exalted as his master’s, though not with quite the same wealth of imagination and eloquence. That the Pope is Antichrist he proves from the Prophet Daniel and other biblical passages, with the same bitter prejudice and the same painstaking exegesis as Luther. On hearing of the misshapen monster, alleged to have been found dead in the Tiber near Rome in 1496, his superstition led him to write a work overflowing with hatred against the older Church in which in all seriousness he expounded the meaning of the “Pope-Ass,” and described every part of its body in detail. This work was published, together with Luther’s on the Freiberg “Monk-Calf.”[1173] Melanchthon there says: “The feminine belly and breasts of the monster denote the Pope’s body, viz. the Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, Monks, Students, and such-like lascivious folk and gluttonous swine, for their life is nothing but feeding and swilling, unchastity and luxury.... The fish scales on the arms, legs, and neck stand for the secular princes and lords” who “cling to the Pope and his rule,” etc.[1174] This curious pamphlet ran through a number of editions, nor did Melanchthon ever become aware of its absurdity. As for Luther, in 1535 he wrote an Appendix, entitled “Luther’s Amen to the Interpretation of the Pope-Ass,” confirming his friend’s reading of the portent. “Because the Divine Majesty,” so we there read, “has Himself created and manifested it [the monstrosity], the whole world ought rightly to tremble and be horror-struck.”[1175]
In his fondness for the superstitions of astrology Melanchthon went further than Luther, who refused to believe in the influence of the planets on man’s destiny, and in the horoscopes on which his companion set so much store. Both, however, were at one in their acceptance of other superstitions, notably of diabolical apparitions even of the strangest kinds.[1176]
On this subject we learn much hitherto unknown from the “Analecta,” published by G. Loesche in 1892.[1177] Melanchthon, for instance, relates that a doctor at Tübingen “kept the devil in a bottle, as magicians are wont to do.”[1178] Amsdorf had once heard the devil grunting. Melanchthon himself had heard a tremendous noise on the roof of the cathedral at Magdeburg, which was a presage of coming warlike disturbances; the same portent had been observed at Wittenberg previous to the besieging of the town.[1179] To what extent people might become tools of the devil was evident, so he told his students, from the example of two witches at Berlin, who had murdered a child in order to raise a snow-storm by means of impious rites, and who were now awaiting punishment at the hands of the authorities.[1180] It was not, however, so easy to deal with witches. At Wittenberg one, while undergoing torture on the rack, had changed herself into a cat and mewed.[1181] Twelve years previously a ghost had killed a fisherman on the Elster.[1182] Hence it was necessary to look out for good remedies and counter-spells against witchcraft. “Where tortoises were to be met with it was held that neither poison nor magic could work any harm.”[1183]
According to Melanchthon the signs in the heavens must never be disregarded when studying the times. Two fiery serpents, which had recently been seen at Eisenberg engaged in a struggle in the sky, were an infallible presage of “coming war in the Church,” especially as a fiery cross had shown itself above the serpents.[1184] By careful calculations he had ascertained that the end of the world, the approach of which was in any case foretold by the wickedness of men, would take place before the year 1582.[1185]
His friend Camerarius remarked with annoyance that “many persons had made notes of Melanchthon’s private conversations and thus affixed a stigma to his name.”[1186] This complaint reminds us of a drollery, none too delicate, contained in the “Analecta” among the “Dicta Melanchthonis” concerning the flatulence of a monk.[1187] Even the editor admits that one cannot think very highly of these sayings of Melanchthon, especially when we remember that the “Dicta” were uttered at lectures which the speaker seemed in the habit of enlivening with all kinds of examples and vulgarities. He adds, “Our discovery reveals the very low standard of the lectures then delivered at the University.”
Loesche also remarks that “these Dicta have contributed to destroy the legend of Melanchthon’s gentleness and kindliness.”[1188]