# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1860_S24
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

24 Melanchthon's Day of Death.

the less he had as yet formed any theological conviction of his own, the
more swiftly and irresistibly he was swept forward into the newly opened
world by the power of Luther's faith. The two attached themselves
closely to one another, existed only for one another, and served one
another with their gifts. In the eyes of the world it redounded to no
small ornament and credit of the Wittenberg Reformation that so
finely cultivated and rich a spirit as Melanchthon had joined himself to
it. This drew a host of students and itinerant scholars from every region
of Germany to Wittenberg, and contributed substantially to spreading
the Reformation. Luther himself acknowledged this with the highest
praise.

In particular he owed to his friend, seventeen years his junior,
instruction in the ancient languages and considerable help in his most
important theological labors and ecclesiastical business. Without M.
nothing of importance took place. We single out here only the most
notable instances. The translation of the Bible, that epoch-making work
of the Reformation, would scarcely have succeeded as well as it now
stands without his knowledge and his fine sense of style. At the first
Saxon Visitation he laid, once again together with Luther, a foundation
stone for the building up of the Church, and proved here that he was not
merely a scholar but also understood how to care for life and the true
edification of the Church with practical discernment. But his activity
became most important of all through two other labors, the Augsburg
Confession and its Apology. The former he wrote partly on Luther's
direction, partly in Luther's spirit, yet with a certain independence of his
own. It is a masterpiece of ecclesiastical composition, of which, apart
from Luther's Small Catechism, we possess no second example, and it
remains to this day the unifying banner of our Church. The Apology M.
worked out independently, by himself. It is a more theological defense
of the Augsburg Confession, but one still of inestimable worth today,
since it sets forth the fundamental doctrines of our Church so gloriously
and clearly, even if here and there somewhat drawn out. Through these
two labors M. wove his name into the Lutheran Reformation and
engraved it unforgettably into the heart of the Church. What else he
accomplished, besides, through his countless opinions, his wearisome
negotiations at imperial diets and conventions in defense of the
Reformation or in the settling of ecclesiastical disputes, as the
indispensable middleman, we pass over here. But it is all a witness that
he truly wore himself out in the service of the Church, so that the
delicately built man, inclined to melancholy, grew weary and sated with
life and its vexatious struggles. A year before his death he wrote:
"Gladly do I depart this life, if God so will; and as the wayfarer who
travels by night longs for the dawn, so do I await with longing the light
of the heavenly academy." And when Peucer asked him before his end
whether he still desired anything, he answered: "Nothing but heaven!
Therefore leave me in peace, disturb not my sweet rest!"

By human reckoning it would be a blessing if we had nothing further