# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1860_S48
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

48 Melanchthon's Death-Day.

we are dealing with a twofold Melanchthon: with M. the Lutheran of 1518–1530, and with M. the union theologian of 1530–1560. In this twofold nature M. is a paradigm for the history of our Church. In his person he first represents the firm, settled foundations of our Church, as they stood for a century and a half through the preponderance of the Lutheran spirit. He then shows in his person the influence of the Reformed spirit in Germany, which breaks a path for itself through the efforts toward union and splinters the Church to this very day. Only the second M. reformed the first and renounced him, which is why the union theologians have a well-founded and almost exclusive claim upon his person. To the Lutheran Church there remain only the works of his first period of life, and however much she may celebrate them, the person, with his later life, has withdrawn from her and has itself cancelled a good part of its earlier works. It is therefore understandable that M. is highly celebrated by the present generation, now that the free theology of union, with its still freer wire-pullers, has made such great conquests within the Lutheran Church. To it has fallen M.'s inheritance together with his half-measures and ambiguities, and if it stands on his shoulders, it has also carried the matter further than he did. It has sought to disentangle itself more fully from M.'s inner contradiction, and has taken up from his Catholic leanings only what is compatible with a free, rational theology. Such considerations were probably at work in the majority of the Eisenach Conference, which is why it pressed for the observance of the death-day. All friends of union can and must celebrate the death-day; in doing so they celebrate M.'s triumph over Luther, the victory of union over the Church of the Reformation; and people will already know how to see to it that, despite all the praises of Luther, this is duly brought to light.

But what are the Lutheran lands to do in which the union has not yet come to legal validity? Are they to renounce M.? M. has dealt badly with our Church — that cannot be denied. Yet he died in the fellowship of our Church. Luther himself, who saw through the whole of M. quite well and even lived to see his falsification of the Augsburg Confession, was indeed indignant at him, but bore with him in hope to the end, mindful of the great services he had rendered to the Reformation. So too it does not seem possible to remove him from the churchly observance. Every Reformation festival is a summons to name M.'s name alongside Luther's, since the two of them together fought through the most important years of the Reformation, from 1518 to 1530. As a fruit of this partnership stand the Augsburg Confession and its Apology, imperishable monuments. Perhaps these were the reasons of the Lutheran minority in the Conference for making the resolution their own.

Yet the question still remains, from what point of view