# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1860_S27
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Melanchthon's Day of Death. 27

been inclined toward the Roman doctrine of the sacrament. Instead, here
he falls short of Luther and leans toward the side of the Reformed,
though without ever finding his way out of his half-measures. At one
point he says that in the Supper we receive nothing more than what we
otherwise also receive through faith alone. Then again he will not break
with the Lutheran Church and seeks some middle way that might satisfy
both parties. Since he did not share Luther's doctrine of the person of
Christ, he probably thought in his heart much as Calvin did, only that he
never, to the very end, arrived at a settled conclusion.

So much we see: that two powers contended over M., the Roman
spirit and the Reformed spirit, each against the other, without his ever
being able to get entirely free of Luther's mighty influence. By his whole
disposition he had to be bent on union, and he recognized this more and
more as his life's task; as indeed the last sigh with which he departed
was: That they may be one, even as we are one! Yet he was precisely
unsuited for this work, because he had not found the unity of the three
churches at all, but rather moved about within contradictory doctrines
himself. One consequence of this was that he was tossed back and forth
by the three churches, depending on which one or the other asserted its
influence over him, and he acquired the reputation of a wavering
theologian who spoiled much and held up much with his half-measures.
This embittered his whole life, and when, before his end, he poured out
his complaints about the "fury of the theologians," these men, to be
sure, treated him without mercy as a traitor — yet M. himself bore a
very great share of the blame.

There are, in particular, three matters which provoked the fury of
the theologians. The first is the falsification of the Augsburg Confession.
Article 10 of it reads: "That the true body and blood of Christ are truly
present under the form of bread and wine and are there distributed
and received. Wherefore the contrary doctrine also is rejected." M.
altered this in 1540 to read: "That with the bread and wine the body
and blood of Christ are truly presented to those who partake in the Holy
Supper." The conclusion, that the Reformed counter-doctrine is
rejected, he left out entirely, because it now really had room in the
ambiguous wording. The Reformed contented themselves fully with this
alteration and declared the confession to be their own confession as
well, without abandoning their own counter-doctrine. Since M.'s subtle
maneuver was at first not noticed, the falsified confession, along with
some other alterations, came into churchly use and produced such
confusion that for a time it had the appearance as though the Lutheran
Church were about to be dissolved into the Reformed. M. thereby
loaded a great guilt upon himself. He may have believed for himself
whatever he wished; but he had no right to alter, on his own authority,
a confession that had been publicly acknowledged and handed over at
the imperial diet, and so to smuggle the alteration silently into the
Church.