his remaining days usefully and piously, and ending them, in the year 1560, in a manner becoming a sincere Christian.

The following are extracts from Melancthon's letters relative to these affairs.

"Sabinus aims to get to court. This is his object. Perhaps he is not disinclined to remove my daughter to a greater distance from me. But I check myself: I commend her to God. I reflect how the mother of John the Baptist, and Mary the mother of our Lord, and many other pious women were preserved; and that at a time when Syria was overrun by Parthian, Roman, and Herodian troops....I remember once when she was ill, in her infancy, to have found my mind suddenly and effectually cheered under my anxieties about her, by the simple reflection, She is the object of the divine care!

Though I grieve to have my daughter removed so far from me, yet, amid so many public miseries, I must bear this private affliction with submission. The thought of her virtues often soothes my sadness. I commend her to God!"-He then relates a little incident of her early years, which had made a lasting impression on his memory and his heart. "I was holding her in my arms in the morning, when she had only her night gown on. She observed

tears stealing down my cheeks, and she took up her skirt and wiped them away. This little action of her's so penetrated my soul, that I could not but think it significant."

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Again: "So the mother, with her two little girls, follows her husband, full of sadness, and anticipating miscarriage and death as the consequence. May God avert it! I pray the Son of God, who hath said, Come unto me, all ye that

A. D. 1560.

1544.

CHAP.
XII.

1547.

labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest, to guard and direct her....The whole proceeding is strange.-But I am now drawing up for him a scheme for the regulation of the university."-Elsewhere, alluding to the troubles which the marriage of his daughter had brought upon both her and himself, he says, "But I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against him."

On receiving the sad tidings of her death, he wrote the following letter to her husband.-“I doubt not you yourself feel that the force of paternal affection is great. You will readily believe me then, when I say that I loved my daughter Ann most dearly. Having therefore formed a high opinion of you from your abilities as a writer, as did also many other competent judges, I willingly gave her to you, praying that the connexion might be happy and prosperous. As however we are taught by the heavenly doctrine what are the causes and the remedies of human afflictions, let us endeavour wisely to receive what has now befallen us.Though I am in the deepest distress for my daughter's death, and because it took place when she was far removed from her parents' embraces, and when I had no opportunity of conversing with her on the most important topics, yet I keep before my mind those consolations which God has graciously provided for us. Among these the chief is, that my dear daughter previously exhibited sure signs of love to God: on which ground I trust that she now enjoys his blessed presence, and that of his Son our Lord Jesus Christ-to whom I often commended her with tears and in that presence it is my hope

Sabinus.

ere long to embrace her again.-But now I wish that our friendship should remain unbroken: and I will do all in my power to preserve it. Your children I account as my own. They are mine and I love them as I loved their mother. ...She was devoted to her children: and I wish to catch her feelings towards them. I not only advise you, but I earnestly entreat you, to send the little girls to me-one or both of them.1 They shall be faithfully and tenderly trained up in the knowledge of God, and in becoming duties, as their sister is. Her letters to you will be a proof of her progress. Little Albert, I take for granted, is committed to a trusty nurse. May God preserve him!... The dangers of the war do not at all prevent my wishing to see all my family gathered round me. God in his mercy has protected us hitherto, and he will, I trust, yet preserve us: and, if circumstances require, I will not neglect to place those about me in a situation of greater security.-But let me know what you resolve to do respecting your daughters."

This letter indicates a mind full of affection, but at the same time, I think, in some degree adjusting itself to the less ardent sensibilities of its correspondent. Some sentences, addressed to confidential friends, depict in a more vivid manner the depth of the writer's grief. To Eber he says, "I send you the account of my daughter's death, the reading of which so increases my grief that I fear its effects on my health. I have before my eyes her gesture, when, on being asked what she would have said to her parents, she replied only by tears; and it awakens "Seu omnes, seu aliquas." This would seem to imply a greater number of daughters than she appears to have left. Perhaps he includes the eldest, who, as the next sentences shew, was already with her grandfather.

1

A. D.

1560.

XII.

CHAP. recollections which harrow up my feelings. But I recur to the consolations which God has proposed to us.-Compassion for my son-in-law also now effaces from my mind the remembrance of past offences." In a subsequent letter he says again : "That silence of my daughter-those tears-have inflicted an incurable wound on my heart." Yet he adds, "my grief for our public calamities' even surpasses that which I feel for my domestic affliction."-To Cruciger he writes: "I loved my daughter with that affection which God has implanted in our nature, and that, quickened by the thought of the sad situation 2 to which she was reduced-especially as it threw her virtues into shade. Her premature death being now added to the calamity, my grief is deep. I blame my own negligence for having thrown her into such circumstances, Yet, since for ten years together3 I daily commended her to God with many tears, and the care of God for her was strikingly discovered to me, I judge that he has removed her out of life in order to relieve her from her troubles: and this thought in some degree reconciles my mind. I give thanks therefore to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that he hath heard my prayers, and called her to a better state." 4

4. Miscel laneous.

Every Christian heart must sympathize with the sorrows and the pious resignation of the afflicted father, on this trying occasion.

IV. We may, lastly, here collect together a few brief miscellaneous notices.

Probably this was written just at the period of the battle of Muhlberg. His daughter died Feb. 26, 1547.

2. Tristissimam servitutem." We must suppose his feelings rather to overcharge his language sometimes.

3 He means from the period of her marriage, in 1536. 4 Camer. Vit. Mel. § 61, 79, 98. Mel. Epist. i. 88, 128. ii. 121, 151, 164. iv. 318, 323, 330–332.

A.D.

1560.

devoted

Of the indefatigable diligence of this spare, feeble, delicate man, for between forty and fifty successive years, in incessant lecturing; in His diliwriting upon almost every branch of science gence and and literature, and indeed upon all sorts of ness. subjects human and divine; in corresponding with persons of all ranks and in various countries; in maintaining the most harassing conferences and disputations; and in journeying to settle churches and regulate universities; it must be superfluous to speak.' We will only add a sentence or two from his letters, expressive of his determination to persevere under all circumstances.

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It may be observed, that among the labours of Melanchon I have not enumerated preaching or pastoral duties. The fact is, I have not been able to discover either from Camerarius, or Melchior Adam, or Bayle, or Dr. Cox, or from his own writings, that Melancthon ever took orders. Fuller, indeed, in his Abel Redivivus, speaks of him as having "preached forty-two years at Wittemberg: " but this seems to be a mere assumption from his having lived and taught there for that length of time. Professor Augusti, who has recently edited some of his works, says expressly, that he "never preached sermons to the people in the vulgar tongue." (Mel. Loci Communes, Augusti, p. 194). He expounded the scriptures, but this appears to have been only in the lectureroom to the students. Lector and "Preceptor" are the terms commonly applied to him, never pastor nor preacher : he is called, indeed," reverende," or "reverendissime vir; but that amounts to no proof of his clerical character. Luther, when in his Patmos, wished him to preach, saying that he was virtually a priest, etiamsi unctus ac rasus non esset;" ("though his crown was not anointed and shaven ;") but he seems not to have complied with the wish. (Melch. Ad. i. 170.) We may add, that he married four or five years before Luther, and apparently without offence; that Eckius, at the Leipsig disputation, and elsewhere, objected to him as "a grammarian and not a divine;" that his epitaph says nothing of him as a priest or minister; and that no trace, as far as I have observed, appears of his having ever occupied any ecclesiastical station.