Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/866

Rh MELANCHTHON the people under both kinds ; but, on the advent of the Anabaptist enthusiasts of Zwickau, he had a still more difficult part to play. Melanchthon was irresolute. In their attacks upon infant baptism they seemed to him to have hit upon a &quot; weak point &quot; ; and in regard to their claim to personal inspiration his position was summed up in his own words, &quot; Luther alone can decide ; on the one hand let us beware of quenching the Spirit of God, and on the other of being led astray by the spirit of Satan.&quot; In the same year he published his Loci Communes Reram Theologicaru m. 1 After the first diet of Spires (1526), where a precarious peace was patched up for the Reformed faith, Melanchthon was deputed as one of twenty-eight commissioners to visit the Reformed states and regulate the constitution of churches, he having just published a famous treatise called the Libellus Visitatorius, a directory for the use of the commissioners. At the Marburg conference (1529) between the German and Swiss Reformers, Luther was pitted against CEcolampadius and Melanchthon against Zwingli in the discussion regarding the real presence in the sacrament. How far the candid conciliatory spirit of Melanchthon was biassed by Luther s intolerance is evident from the exagger ated and inaccurate accounts of the conference written by the former to the elector of Saxony. At the diet of Augsburg (1530) Melanchthon was the leading representa tive of the Reformation. With anxiety and tears he drew up for that diet the seventeen articles of the evangelical faith, which are known as the - Augsburg Confession.&quot; He held conferences with Romish divines appointed to adjust differences, and afterwards wrote an Apology for the Augsburg Confession. After the Augsburg conference further attempts were made to settle the Reformation controversy by a compromise, and Melanchthon, from his conciliatory spirit and facility of access, appeared to the Romanists the fittest of the Reformers to deal with. His historical instinct led him ever to revert to the original unity of the church, and to regard subse- qient Romish errors as excrescences rather than proofs of an essentially anti-Christian system. He was weary of the rabies theologorum, and fondly dreamed that the evangelical leaven, if simply tolerated, would at length purify the church s life and doctrine. In 1537, when the Protestant divines signed the Lutheran Articles of Smalkald, Melanchthon appended to his signature the reservation that he would admit of a pope provided he allowed the gospel and did not claim to rule by divine right. The year after Luther s death, when the battle of Muhlberg (1547) had given a seemingly crushing blow to the Protestant cause, an attempt was made to weld together the iron and clay of the evangelical and the papal doctrines, which resulted in the compilation by Pflug, Sidonius, and Agricola of the Augsburg &quot; Interim.&quot; This was proposed to the two parties in Germany as a provisional ground of agreement till the decision of the council of Trent. Melanchthon, on being referred to, declared equivocally that, though the Interim was inadmissible, yet so far as matters of indifference (adiaphora) were concerned it might be received. Hence arose that &quot; adiaphoristic &quot; controversy in connexion with which he has been misrepresented as holding among matters of indifference such cardinal doctrines as justification by faith, the number of the sacraments, as well as the dominion of the pope, feast-days, and so on. The fact is that, in these tentative negotiations, Melanchthon sought, not really to minimize differences, but to veil them under an intentional obscurity of expression. Thus he allowed the necessity of good works to salva tion, but not in the Romish sense, proposed to allow the seven sacraments, but only as rites which had no inherent efficacy to salvation, and so on. He afterwards retracted his compliance with the adiaphora, and never really swerved from the views set forth in the Loci Communes but he regarded the surrender of more perfect for less perfect forms of truth or of expression as a painful sacrifice rendered to the weakness of erring brethren. Luther, though he had uttered certain expressions of dissatisfaction with Melanchthon, and had more keenly defended in his last years what was distinctively his own, yet maintained hearty and unbroken friendship with him ; but after Luther s death certain smaller men arose in name of Luther who formed a party emphasizing the extremest points of the doctrine of the latter. Hence the later years of Melanch thon were much occupied with acrid controversies within the evangelical church ; an account of these, however, would be out of place here. His last years were spent in fruitless conferences with his Romanist adversaries, and amid various controversies among the Reformed, but the flame of his piety burnt brightly till the close. He died in his sixty-third year, on the 19th April 1560, and his body was laid beside that of Martin Luther. Melanchthon s ever ready pen, clear thought, and elegant stylo made him the scribe of the Reformation, most public documents on that side being drawn up by him. He never attained entire in dependence of Luther, though he gradually modified some of his positions from those of the pure Lutherism with which he set out. His development is chiefly noteworthy in regard to these two lead ing points the relation of the cvangclium or doctrine of free grace (1) to free will and moral ability, and (2) to the law and pcenitentia or the good works connected with repentance. At first Luther s cardinal doctrine of grace appeared to Melanchthon inconsistent with any view of free will ; and, following Luther, he renounced Aristotle and philosophy in general, since &quot;philosophers attribute everything to human power, while the sacred writings represent all moral power as lost by the fall.&quot; In the first edition of the Loci (1521) he held, to the length of fatalism, the August inian doctrine of irresistible grace, working according to God s immutable decrees, and denied freedom of will in matters civil and religious alike. In the Augsburg Confession (1530), which was largely due to him, freedom is claimed for the will in non-religious matters, and in the Loci of 1533 he calls the denial of freedom Stoicism, and holds that in justification there is a certain causality, though not worthiness, in the recipient siibordinate to the Divine causality. In 1535, combating Laurentius Valla, lie did not deny the spiritual incapacity of the will per sc, but held that this is strengthened by the word of God, to which it can cleave. The will co-operates with the word and the Holy Spirit. Finally, in 1543, he says that the cause of the difference of final destiny among men lies in the different method of treating grace which is possible to believers as to others. Man may pray for help and reject grace. This he calls free will, as the power of laying hold of grace. Melanchthon s doctrine of the three concurrent causes in conversion, viz., the Holy Spirit, the word, and the human will, suggested the semi- Pelagian position called Synergisrn, which was held by some of his immediate followers. In regard to the relation of grace to repentance and good works, Luther was disposed to make faith itself the principle of sanctifi- cation. Melanchthon, however, for whom ethics possessed a special interest, laid more stress on the law. He began to do this in 1527 in the Libellus Visitatorius, which urged pastors to instruct their people in the necessity of repentance, and to bring the threatenings of the law to bear upon men in order to faith. This brought down upon him the opposition of the Antinomian John Agricola. In the Loci of 1535 Melanchthon sought to put the fact of the co-existence of justification and good works in the believer on a secure basis by declaring the latter necessary to eternal life, though the believer s destiny thereto is already fully guaranteed in his justification. In the Loci of 1543 he did not retain the doctrine of the necessity of good works in order to salvation, and to this he added, in the Leipsic Interim, &quot;that this in no way countenances the error that eternal life is merited by the worthiness of our own works.&quot; Melanchthon was led gradually to lay more and more stress upon the law and moral ideas ; but the basis of the relation of faith and good works was never clearly brought out by him, and he at length fell back on his original position that we have justification and inheritance of bliss in and by Christ alone, and that good works are necessary by reason of immutable Divine command. Mclanchtlum s life has been written by Cumevarius. See also Miittlies, PA. Melanrtthon, sein Lfben vnd Wirken, 1841; Galle, Charatteristil MtlanchthOH* alsTheolonen Halle 1845; R&amp;lt;AbtftQedaehtniMrede&amp;lt;mftfetanchtfu&amp;gt;n,l86Q; Nftzsch, Melanchthon 1860 Schmidt, Melanchthons L ben, 18(i4. There is a biography In English by F. A. Cox, 2.1 ed., London, 1817. The works of Melanchthon, including his correspondence, are contained in t .ie voluminous Corput Reform* torvm, edited by Bretschncider and Bindseil. (J- WI.)