# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1860_S10
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

10    Preface to the 1860 Volume.

...or to the common welfare."*) This confession can cast no shadow upon Luther, for that same Melanchthon who makes it himself bore this testimony to Luther in the funeral oration he delivered for him: "So must everyone, too, who rightly knew him (Luther) and was often about him, testify to this: that he was a very kind man, and, wherever he was among people, gracious, friendly, and amiable in all his speech, and not at all impudent, blustering, self-willed, or quarrelsome (contentiosus aut rixator); and yet there was besides an earnestness and boldness in his words and bearing, such as should be in such a man . . Whence it is plain that the severity which he used in his writings against the enemies of pure doctrine was not that of a quarrelsome and malicious temper, but of a great earnestness and zeal for the truth. This we must all testify of him, and likewise many other strangers who saw and knew him . . I myself have often come upon him praying with hot tears for the whole Church. For he took to himself daily a special, particular time and season to speak certain Psalms, in the midst of which he mingled his prayer to God with sighing and weeping." (See Luther's Works. Walch. XXI, 353. 354. Cf. Memoriam funeris Lutheri recolere studet, C. G. Hofmannus. Wittenberg, 1746, p. 97, where the oration is found in its original language, Latin.) Now if Melanchthon nevertheless writes, as quoted above, that he sighed under Luther in an almost unbearable servitude, he thereby betrays only this: that he did not dare to speak openly to Luther's face, but with inward reluctance outwardly submitted himself to Luther only on the surface; that Luther therefore did not know much of what Melanchthon was already undertaking behind his back in his own lifetime; and hence it may seem as if Luther displayed toward Melanchthon's falsification of doctrine a patience that would now put us to shame. How Melanchthon and his colleagues, who later openly departed with him, still conducted themselves toward Luther as late as the year 1544 may be gathered from a letter of Luther's, which he wrote in that year, the Monday after Quasimodogeniti, on April 21, to Hungary, whither the rumor had spread that the Wittenbergers had given way in the doctrine of the Holy Supper. In this letter Luther writes, namely: "Of Master Philip I think nothing evil at all, nor of any of ours. For, as I have said, openly the devil dares not mutter a word about it." (XXI, 1335.) And yet Melanchthon had already for a long time secretly held together with the adversaries of pure doctrine, and

*) "Ego cum decreverit Princeps, etiamsi non probabo, tamen nihil seditiose faciam, sed vel tacebo vel feram, quicquid accidet. Tuli et antea servitutem pene deformem, cum saepe N. magis suae naturae, in qua φιλονεικία erat non exigua, quam vel personae suae, vel utilitati communi serviret." [If the Prince decides thus, even though I shall not approve it, yet I will do nothing seditious, but will either keep silent or bear whatever happens. I have also endured before now an almost shameful servitude, since N. often served his own nature, in which there was no small contentiousness, rather than either his own person or the common welfare.] This letter is found printed in Löscher's Fortgesetzte Sammlung von alten und neuen theologischen Sachen [Continued Collection of Old and New Theological Matters].    See year 1730, p. 381 ff.