The letter of censure which he wrote on Luther’s marriage is a strange mixture of annoyance that this step should be taken at so critical a juncture, of displeasure at Luther’s thoughtless buffoonery and frivolous behaviour, and, on the other hand, of forbearance, nay, admiration, for the man who, in other respects, still appeared to him so great. “That his friends [Melanchthon and Camerarius] had privately criticised Luther’s behaviour is proved beyond a doubt from a remark in the letter on Luther’s marriage.”[1211]
The contrast between their wives was also unfavourable to the amity existing between Luther and Melanchthon. The daughter of the Burgomaster of Wittenberg, Catherine Krapp, whom Melanchthon had married, seems to have been a rather haughty patrician, who was disposed to look down on Catherine von Bora, whose family, though aristocratic, had fallen on evil days. In a letter of a friend of Luther the “tyranny of women” is once referred to as a disturbing factor, and the context shows that the complaint was drawn forth by Melanchthon’s wife and not by Bora.[1212]
Melanchthon’s troubles were, however, mostly caused by the differences, literary and theological, which sprang up between Luther and himself, and by his experiences and disappointments in Church matters and questions of conscience.
Luther’s violent and incautious manner of proceeding led him to surmise, to his great regret, that many had attached themselves to the cause of the innovations merely from a desire for the freedom of the flesh, and that the rising against the older Church had let loose a whole current of base elements.[1213] The virulence with which Luther attacked everything could, in Melanchthon’s opinion, only tend to alienate the better sort, i.e. the very people whose help was essential to the carrying out of any real reform.
As early as 1525 he began to find fault with Luther’s too turbulent ways. In 1526, on the appearance of Erasmus’s “Hyperaspistes,” the scholar’s incisive and brilliant rejoinder to Luther’s “De servo Arbitrio,” Melanchthon feared some unhappy outbreak, and, accordingly, he urgently begged the latter to keep silence in the interests of truth and justice, which he thought to be more likely on the side of Erasmus. To Camerarius he wrote, on April 11, 1526: “Oh, that Luther would hold his tongue! I had hoped that advancing years and his experience of the prevailing evils would have quietened him, but now I see that he is growing even more violent (‘subinde vehementiorem fieri’) in every struggle into which he enters. This causes me great pain.”[1214] Erasmus himself he assured later by letter, that he had “never made any secret of this at Wittenberg,” i.e. of his displeasure at the tracts Luther had published against the great Humanist, for one reason “because they were not conducive to the public welfare.”[1215]
It was inevitable that a certain coolness should spring up between them, for though Melanchthon was supple enough to be cautious in his personal dealings with Luther, yet there can be no doubt that many of his strictures duly reached the ears of his friend. The more determined Lutherans, such as Aquila and Amsdorf, even formed a party to thwart his plans.[1216] Melanchthon also complains of opponents at the Court. Those who had been dissatisfied with his doings at the Visitation “fanned the flames at Court,” and so much did he suffer through these intrigues that, according to a later statement of his, his “life was actually in danger” (“ut vita mea in discrimen veniret”).[1217]
So greatly was he overwhelmed that, in 1527, he even declared he would rather his son should die than occupy a position of such sore anxiety as his own.[1218]
In spite of the growing independence displayed by Melanchthon, Luther continued to show him the greatest consideration and forbearance, and even to heap literary praise on him, as he did, for instance, in his Preface to Melanchthon’s very mediocre Exposition of the Epistle to the Colossians.[1219] He was all the more set on attaching Melanchthon to himself and his cause by such eulogies, because he dreaded lest his comrade’s preference for his Humanistic labours should one day deprive the new faith of his so powerful support.
The command of the Elector was afterwards to send the learned but timid man to the Diets, notwithstanding that he was quite unsuited for political labours on the great stage of the world. We know already what his feelings were at Spires and then again at Augsburg. His most recent biographer says of the earlier Diet: “The depression induced in him by the Protest of Spires and the growth of Zwinglianism, increased still more during his journey home and the first days after his return; he felt profoundly downcast and looked forward to the future with the utmost anxiety. From his standpoint he certainly had good reason for his fear.”[1220] At Augsburg he suffered so much that Luther wrote to him: “You torment yourself without respite.... It is not theology, however, which torments you but your philosophy, and therefore your fears are groundless.”[1221] And later: “I have been through greater inward torments than I trust you will ever experience, and such as I would not wish any man, not even our bitterest opponents there. And yet, amidst such troubles, I have often been cheered up by the words of a brother, for instance, Pomeranus, yourself, Jonas, or some other. Hence, why not listen to us, who speak to you, not according to the flesh or world, but undoubtedly according to God and the Holy Ghost?” But you prefer to lean on your philosophy; “Led away by your reason you act according to your own foolishness and are killing yourself ... whereas this matter is really beyond us and must be left to God.” Luther felt convinced that his “prayer for Melanchthon was most certainly being answered.”[1222]
The hope that Melanchthon would get the better of his depression after the momentous Diet was over was only partially realised.