# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1857_S330
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

330 A Monument Is to Be Erected at Wittenberg to Melanchthon, the "Teacher of Germany," etc.

departs from my opinion, to set my own opinion aside." This high regard for Melanchthon's learning and his heartfelt love for him could not, however, keep Luther from complaining bitterly of Melanchthon's yielding toward the Sacramentarians; indeed, it could not prevent him from already resolving to write against Melanchthon. The chief occasion lay in Melanchthon's arbitrary handling of the Augsburg Confession, which in 1530 had been presented to the Emperor Charles V. It contained what was common and public property of the whole Lutheran Church protesting against Rome and also against the Swiss, and as a document it therefore also possessed a certain inviolability, according to which no one was at liberty to make alterations in it. This, however, Melanchthon permitted himself in an arbitrary manner, as Luther decidedly rebuked in him, saying: "Philip, the book is not yours, but the property of the whole Church." This lay in Melanchthon's false view that he regarded the Confession as, so to speak, his private work or private writing, and also in his whole timid character, so ready to accommodate itself to others. In this too he especially erred, that he thought the theologians were the sole particular bearers of the truth, and that they in particular had to stand in the breach. And after the Wittenberg Concord of 1536 he thought that the Reformed fellow believers had in the great point of controversy over the Lord's Supper essentially approached the doctrinal position of the Lutheran Church; wherefore, to please them, he made in his "altered" Confession of 1540, in the 10th Article, without asking the princes, estates, and confessors, that unhappy change, and struck out the earlier words: "That the body and blood of Christ are truly present." In the Book of Concord of 1580 this Variata is therefore rejected, "because certain persons undertook to conceal and hide error concerning the Holy Supper and other impure doctrine under the words of that other edition — notwithstanding that such erroneous doctrine is rejected in express words in the Confession presented at Augsburg." The "strict and confessional Lutherans" of that day and still today have made themselves guilty of no injustice toward Melanchthon when they said: "Melanchthon was a Reformer, Calvin no Reformer, Luther the Reformer."

2) Melanchthon's complaint about the rabies theologorum referred particularly to the theologians of the Jena university, which the former Elector John Frederick had founded in place of the Wittenberg one that had been lost to him. At the head of them stood particularly the well-known Flacius Illyricus, who indeed declared himself in the most decided manner against Melanchthon's flirtation with Calvin and attacked the half-heartedness of "Philippism," as this tendency was called. Now however much something merely human may have befallen the men of Jena in the controversy; however much, in the turmoil of battle, the swirling dust may have somewhat darkened their eyes and moved them to unmerciful blows even upon friends — this much is certain