Melanchthon was at that time in a certain sense the “one who, thanks to his moderation, kept everything together at Wittenberg. This is expressly stated by Cruciger.”[1260] For this his endless patience, what he himself terms his “servile spirit,”[1261] was to some extent accountable. Yet his Humanism, and the equanimity, calmness and moderation he owed to it, doubtless served the peacemaker in good stead. To all, whether of his own party or of the opposite, he was wont to declare his abhorrence of the “democratia aut tyrannis indoctorum.”[1262] Owing to such personal qualities of Melanchthon’s, Cochlæus himself, in a letter to his friend Dantiscus, in which he attacks Melanchthon, admits that he was “nevertheless at heart very fond of him.”[1263]
CHAPTER XIX
LUTHER’S RELATIONS WITH ZWINGLI, CARLSTADT, BUGENHAGEN AND OTHERS
1. Zwingli and the Controversy on the Supper
From the time that Zwingli, in 1519, commenced working on his own lines at Zürich in the cause of the religious innovations, he had borrowed more and more largely from Luther’s writings. Whilst acknowledging Luther’s great achievements he did not, however, sacrifice his independence. Writing in 1523 with a strong sense of what he himself had done and of the success which had attended his own efforts, he said: “I began to preach before ever I had heard of Luther.... I was not instructed by Luther, for, until two years ago, his very name was unknown to me, and I worked on the Bible Word alone.... Nor do I intend to be called after Luther, seeing that I have read but little of his doctrine. What I have read of his writings, however, is as a rule so excellently grounded on the Word of God, that no creature can overthrow it.... I did not learn the teaching of Christ from Luther, but from the Word of God. If Luther preaches Christ, he is doing the same as I, though, praise be to God, countless more souls have been led to God by him than by me.”[1264]
Little attention was paid at Wittenberg to the religious occurrences at Zürich, though they had been welcomed by Luther. Only when Zwingli sided with Carlstadt against Luther in the controversy on the Supper did the latter begin to give him more heed; this he at once did in his own fashion. He asserted, as he had already done in the case of Carlstadt, [Œcolampadius and others, that Zwingli would not have known the truth concerning Christ and the Evangel “had not Luther first written on the subject”; of his own initiative he would never have dared to come to freedom and the light; later he spoke of him as “a child of his loins” who had betrayed him.[1265]
In 1526 the divergency of opinion between Luther and Zwingli on the subject of the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, already present as early as 1524, became much more apparent.[1266]
Luther, in 1526, in his “Sermon von dem Sacrament,” and, in 1527, in his work on the words “This is My Body,” had, conformably with his theory, urged that Christ is present with the bread, and spoken not at all kindly of his Swiss gainsayers, the Zwinglians.[1267] Zwingli, on his side, soon after the appearance of the last work, attacked Luther’s view in a writing entitled “Amica exegesis” (1528); this, his first open assault on the Wittenberg doctor, he followed up with a German pamphlet on the words of Christ: “This is My Body.” In these we have the protest of the sceptical rationalism of Zürich, against Luther’s half-hearted doctrine on the Sacrament.