Melanchthon's animosity ran high not only against such extremists as Saliger (Beatus) and Fredeland (both were deposed in Luebeck 1568 and Saliger again in Rostock 1569) who taught that in virtue of the consecration before the use (ante usum) bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ, denouncing all who denied this as Sacramentarians (Gieseler 3, 2, 257), but also against all those who faithfully adhered to, and defended, Luther's phraseology concerning the Lord's Supper. He rejected the teaching of Westphal and the Hamburg ministers, according to which in the Lord's Supper, the bread is properly called the body of Christ and the wine the blood of Christ, and stigmatized their doctrine as "bread-worship, artolatreia." (C. R. 8, 362. 660. 791; 9, 470. 962.)
In a similar manner Melanchthon ridiculed the old Lutheran teaching of the omnipresence of Christ according to His human nature as a new and foolish doctrine. Concerning the Confession and Report of the Wuerttemberg Theologians, framed by Brenz and adopted 1559, which emphatically asserted the real presence, as well as the omnipresence of Christ also according to His human nature, Melanchthon remarked contemptuously in a letter to Jacob Runge, dated February 1, 1560 and in a letter to G. Cracow, dated February 3, 1560, that he could not characterize "the decree of the Wuerttemberg Fathers (Abbates Wirtebergenses) more aptly than as Hechinger Latin (Hechingense Latinum, Hechinger Latein)," i.e., as absurd and insipid teaching. (9, 1035f.; 7, 780. 884.)
204. Melanchthon Claimed by Calvin.
In 1554 Nicholas Gallus of Regensburg republished, with a preface of his own, Philip Melanchthon's Opinions of Some Ancient Writers Concerning the Lord's Supper. The timely reappearance of this book, which Melanchthon, in 1530, had directed against the Zwinglians, was most embarrassing to him as well as to his friend Calvin. The latter, therefore, now urged him to break his silence and come out openly against his public assailants. But Melanchthon did not consider it expedient to comply with this request. Privately, however, he answered, October 14, 1554: "As regards your admonition in your last letter that I repress the ignorant clamors of those who renew the strife concerning the bread-worship, know that some of them carry on this disputation out of hatred toward me in order to have a plausible reason for oppressing me. Quod me hortaris, ut reprimam ineruditos clamores illorum, qui renovant certamen peri artolatreias, scito, quosdam praecipue odio mei eam disputationem movere, ut habeant plausibilem causam ad me opprimendum." (8, 362.)
Fully persuaded that he was in complete doctrinal agreement with his Wittenberg friend on the controverted questions, Calvin finally, in his Last Admonition (Ultima Admonitio) to Westphal, 1557, publicly claimed Melanchthon as his ally, and implored him to give public testimony "that they [the Calvinists and Zwinglians] teach nothing foreign to the Augsburg Confession, nihil alienum nos tradere a Confessione Augustana." "I confirm," Calvin here declared, "that in this cause [concerning the Lord's Supper] Philip can no more be torn from me than from his own bowels. Confirmo, non magis a me Philippum quam a propriis visceribus in hoc causa posse divelli." (C. R. 37 [Calvini Opp. 9], 148. 149. 193. 466; Gieseler 3, 2, 219, Tschackert, 536.) Melanchthon, however, continued to preserve his sphinxlike silence, which indeed declared as loud as words could have done that he favored the Calvinists, and was opposed to those who defended Luther's doctrine. To Mordeisen he wrote, November 15, 1557: "If you will permit me to live at a different place, I shall reply, both truthfully and earnestly to these unlearned sycophants, and say things that are useful to the Church." (C. R. 9, 374.)
After the death of Melanchthon, Calvin wrote in his Dilucida Explicatio against Hesshusius, 1561: "O Philip Melanchthon! For it is to you that I appeal, who art living with Christ in the presence of God and there waiting for us until we shall be assembled with you into blessed rest. A hundred times you have said, when, fatigued with labor and overwhelmed with cares, you, as an intimate friend, familiarly laid your head upon my breast: Would to God I might die on this bosom! But afterwards I have wished a thousand times that we might be granted to be together. You would certainly have been more courageous to engage in battle and stronger to despise envy, and disregard false accusations. In this way, too, the wickedness of many would have been restrained whose audacity to revile grew from your pliability, as they called it. O Philippe Melanchthon! Te enim appello, qui apud Deum cum Christo vivis, nosque illic exspectas, donec tecum in beatam quietem colligamur. Dixisti centies, quum fessus laboribus et molestiis oppressus caput familiariter in sinum meum deponeres: Utinam, utinam moriar in hoc sinu! Ego vero millies postea optavi nobis contingere, ut simul essemus. Certe animosior fuisses ad obeunda certamina et ad spernendam invidiam falsasque criminationes pro nihilo ducendas fortior. Hoc quoque modo cohibita fuisset multorum improbitos, quibus ex tua mollitie, quam vocabant, crevit insultandi audacia." (C. R. 37 [Calvini Opp. 9], 461f.) It was not Melanchthon, but Westphal, who disputed Calvin's claim by publishing (1557) extracts from Melanchthon's former writings under the title: Clarissimi Viri Ph. Melanchthonis Sententia de Coena Domini, ex scriptis eius collecta. But, alas, the voice of the later Melanchthon was not that of the former!
205. Advising the Crypto-Calvinists.
In various other ways Melanchthon showed his impatience with the defenders of Luther's doctrine and his sympathy with their Calvinistic opponents. When Timann of Bremen, who sided with Westphal, opposed Hardenberg, a secret, but decided Calvinist, Melanchthon admonished the latter not to rush into a conflict with his colleagues, but to dissimulate. He says in a letter of April 23, 1556: "Te autem oro, ne properes ad certamen cum collegis. Oro etiam, ut multa dissimules." (C. R. 8, 736.) Another letter (May 9, 1557), in which he advises Hardenberg how to proceed against his opponents, begins as follows: "Reverend Sir and Dear Brother. As you see, not only the controversy, but also the madness (rabies) of the writers who establish the bread-worship is growing." (9, 154.) He meant theologians who, like Timann and Westphal, defended Luther's doctrine that in the Lord's Supper the bread is truly the body of Christ and the wine truly the blood of Christ and that Christ is truly present also according to His human nature. Again, when at Heidelberg, in 1569, Hesshusius refused to acknowledge the Calvinist Klebitz (who had publicly defended the Reformed doctrine) as his assistant in the distribution of the Lord's Supper, and Elector Frederick III, the patron of the Crypto-Calvinists, who soon after joined the Reformed Church, demanded that Hesshusius come to an agreement with Klebitz, and finally deposed the former and dismissed the latter, Melanchthon approved of the unionistic methods of the Elector, and prepared ambiguous formulas to satisfy both parties.
In the Opinion requested by the Elector, dated November 1, 1559, Melanchthon said: "To answer is not difficult, but dangerous…. Therefore I approve of the measure of the illustrious Elector, commanding silence to the disputants on both sides [Hesshusius and the Calvinist Klebitz], lest dissension occur in the weak church…. The contentious men having been removed, it will be profitable that the rest agree on one form of words. It would be best in this controversy to retain the words of Paul: 'The bread which we break is the communion (koinonia) of Christ.' Much ought to be said concerning the fruit of the Supper to invite men to love this pledge and to use it frequently. And the word 'communion' must be explained: Paul does not say that the nature of the bread is changed, as the Papists say; He does not say, as those of Bremen do, that the bread is the substantial body of Christ; he does not say that the bread is the true body of Christ, as Hesshusius does; but that it is the communion, i.e., that by which the union occurs (consociatio fit) with the body of Christ, which occurs in the use, and certainly not without thinking, as when mice gnaw the bread…. The Son of God is present in the ministry of the Gospel, and there He is certainly efficacious in the believers, and He is present not on account of the bread, but on account of man, as He says, 'Abide in Me and I in you,' Again: 'I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you,' And in these true consolations He makes us members of His, and testifies that He will raise our bodies. Thus the ancients explain the Lord's Supper." (C. R. 9, 961.) No doubt, Calvin, too, would readily have subscribed to these ambiguous and indefinite statements. C. P. Krauth pertinently remarks: "Whatever may be the meaning of Melanchthon's words in the disputed cases, this much is certain, that they practically operated as if the worse sense were the real one, and their mischievousness was not diminished, but aggravated, by their obscurity and double meaning. They did the work of avowed error, and yet could not be reached as candid error might." (Cons. Ref., 291.)
206. Historians on Melanchthon's Doctrinal Departures.