Philipp Melanchthon - Estimation of His Works and Character

Estimation of His Works and Character

Melanchthon's importance for the Reformation lay essentially in the fact that he systematized Luther's ideas, defended them in public, and made them the basis of a religious education. These two, by complementing each other, could be said to have harmoniously achieved the results of the Reformation. Melanchthon was impelled by Luther to work for the Reformation; his own inclinations would have kept him a student. Without Luther's influence Melanchthon would have been "a second Erasmus," although his heart was filled with a deep religious interest in the Reformation. While Luther scattered the sparks among the people, Melanchthon by his humanistic studies won the sympathy of educated people and scholars for the Reformation. Besides Luther's strength of faith, Melanchthon's many-sidedness and calmness, as well as his temperance and love of peace, had a share in the success of the movement.

Both were aware of their mutual position and they thought of it as a divine necessity of their common calling. Melanchthon wrote in 1520, "I would rather die than be separated from Luther," whom he afterward compared to Elijah, and called "the man full of the Holy Ghost." In spite of the strained relations between them in the last years of Luther's life, Melanchthon exclaimed at Luther's death, "Dead is the horseman and chariot of Israel who ruled the Church in this last age of the world!"

On the other hand, Luther wrote of Melanchthon, in the preface to Melanchthon's Commentary on the Galatians (1529), "I had to fight with rabble and devils, for which reason my books are very warlike. I am the rough pioneer who must break the road; but Master Philipp comes along softly and gently, sows and waters heartily, since God has richly endowed him with gifts." Luther also did justice to Melanchthon's teachings, praising one year before his death in the preface to his own writings Melanchthon's revised Loci above them and calling Melanchthon "a divine instrument which has achieved the very best in the department of theology to the great rage of the devil and his scabby tribe." It is remarkable that Luther, who vehemently attacked men like Erasmus and Bucer, when he thought that truth was at stake, never spoke directly against Melanchthon, and even during his melancholy last years conquered his temper.

The strained relation between these two men never came from external things, such as human rank and fame, much less from other advantages, but always from matters of Church and doctrine, and chiefly from the fundamental difference of their individualities; they repelled and attracted each other "because nature had not formed out of them one man." However, it can not be denied that Luther was the more magnanimous, for however much he was at times dissatisfied with Melanchthon's actions, he never uttered a word against his private character; but Melanchthon, on the other hand, sometimes evinced a lack of confidence in Luther. In a letter to Carlowitz he complained that Luther on account of his polemical nature exercised a personally humiliating pressure upon him.