# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1860_S335
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Luther and Melanchthon. 335

-longing to the creditor, and is thus demanded not as a good given
by the debtor at the same time out of fairness and love.

XV. To borrow money at usury, without being compelled to it by necessity, is sin.

Proof: Since lending at usury is against the moral law and is cast out by every honest branch of trade as foreign to it, and since God's revealed Word declares it a misdeed and an abomination before God, an appeal to the usurer to obtain a loan from him, when this is not occasioned by necessity, can only be regarded as a wanton incitement to sin — something that cannot be done in the name of JEsus, and is sin.

—

Luther and Melanchthon.

On the occasion of the academic commemoration held at Leipzig on April 19 of this year for the three-hundredth anniversary of Philip Melanchthon's death, Prof. Dr. K. F. A. Kahnis delivered an address in memory of Melanchthon, which has appeared with Dörffling and Francke in Leipzig and lies before us. From this address we share a comparison which the learned speaker draws in it between Luther and Melanchthon. It reads there as follows:

To be sure, Melanchthon was by nature devout from the start, at home in Scripture, introduced to theology, guided by Reuchlin into the reforming direction, and thus prepared in every respect for Wittenberg: but without Luther he would not have crossed the path of humanism, nor won for himself a place beside Erasmus and Reuchlin. But on the decisive ground of Wittenberg he attached himself to Luther with youthful enthusiasm. As is well known, he took part the very next year, 1519, in the Leipzig Disputation, and by his remarks repeatedly embarrassed Eck, from which embarrassment the latter sought to extricate himself with the words: Tace Philippe et cura studia sua [Be silent, Philip, and mind your studies]. Melanchthon, with a heart already prepared, seized upon the center of Luther's life, justification by faith, Luther's whole circle of theological thought, Luther's protest against Rome. So powerful was Luther's impression upon Melanchthon that he nearly lost the center of gravity of his own individuality to this man, whom in his first enthusiasm he called an Elijah, and of whom he said, on hearing of his death: Alas, the chariot and horsemen of Israel are gone [2 Kings 2:12]. That Luther was a higher nature than himself, Melanchthon not only always confessed in words of the deepest humility, but also proved by deed, in that he constantly subordinated himself to him, let himself be guided by him in all decisive matters, and, wherever Luther's preponderance weighed upon him, never shook at the bonds that bound him to