It is the merest makeshift, when, like other of his Humanist contemporaries, Melanchthon seeks to base our knowledge of God’s existence on feeling and on a vague inward experience.[1012]
Thus we can quite understand how old-fashioned Protestantism, after having paid but little attention to Melanchthon either in the days of orthodox Lutheranism or of Pietism, began to have recourse to him with the advent of Rationalism. The orthodox had missed in him Luther’s sparkling “strength of faith” and the courageous resolve to twit the “devil” within and without; the Pietists failed to discern in him the mysticism they extolled in Luther. Rationalists, on the other hand, found in him many kindred elements. Even of quite recent years Melanchthon has been hailed as the type of the easy-going theologian who seeks to bridge the chasm between believing and infidel Protestantism; at any rate, Melanchthon’s positive belief was far more extensive than that of many of his would-be imitators.
Melanchthon Legends
The tale once current that, at the last, Melanchthon was a Lutheran only in name, is to-day rejected by all scholars, Protestant and Catholic.
Concerning the “honesty of his Protestantism” “no doubts” are raised by Protestant theologians, who call his teaching a “modification and a toning down” of that of Luther; nor can we conclude that “he was at all shaky in his convictions,” even should the remarkable utterance about to be cited really emanate from him.[1013] A Catholic historian of the highest standing agrees in saying of him: “Even though Luther’s teaching may not have completely satisfied Melanchthon, yet there is no reason to doubt, that, on the whole, he was heart and soul on the side of the innovations.... We may now and then come upon actions on his part which arouse a suspicion as to his straightforwardness, but on the whole his convictions cannot be questioned.”[1014]
In Catholic literature, nevertheless, even down to the present day, we often find Melanchthon quoted as having said to his mother, speaking of the relative value of the old and the new religion: “Hæc plausibilior, illa securior; Lutheranism is the more popular, but Catholicism is the safer.”[1015]
This story concerning Melanchthon assumed various forms as time went on. We must dismiss the version circulated by Florimond de Raemond in 1605, to the effect that the words had been spoken by Melanchthon on his death-bed to his mother who had remained a Catholic, when the latter adjured him to tell her the truth;[1016] his mother, as a matter of fact, died at her home at Bretten in the Lower Palatinate long before her son, in 1529, slightly before July 24, being then in her fifty-third year.[1017]
Nor is there much to be said in favour of another version of the above story which has it that Melanchthon’s mother, after having been persuaded by him to come over, visited him in great distress of mind, and received from him the above reply.
Melanchthon called on her at Bretten in May, 1524, during his stay in his native place, and may have done so again in 1529 in the spring, when attending the Diet of Spires. A passage in his correspondence construed as referring to this visit is by no means clear,[1018] though the illness and death of his mother would seem to make such a flying visit likely. On a third occasion Melanchthon went to Bretten in the autumn of 1536.
We shall first see what Protestant writers have to say of the supposed conversation with the mother.