Aikin, London, 1812. It is a sensible and elegant little work, and appears, in the main, to be accurate; though not sufficiently elaborate to be appealed to on any doubtful question. The author professes chiefly to follow Bullinger's "Schweitzer Chronick," a work of that celebrated reformer, which, I believe, still exists only in manuscript, at Zuric. I much suspect, however, that M. Hess's acquaintance with it is only through the medium of J. J. Hottinger's History. It seems much to be regretted that such a work, of such an author as Bullinger, should never have been communicated to the world. June, 1829. IN again committing this volume to the press, I have somewhat anxiously reviewed the representation I had given of Melancthon; particularly of his conduct relative to the Interim, and the reception of part of its provisions in Saxony. I was led to do this more especially by the circumstance that another writer, whose principles and whose production alike entitle him to respect, had subsequently to my first publication gone over the same ground, and had presented a less favourable report than I had given. I have found however no sufficient reason to depart from my first statements. Sundry. letters indeed of good and wise men are appealed to, censuring Melancthon with more or less severity: but it is not shewn that those letters were not written under the influence of the same wide-spread and zealously circulated mis representations, which Beza assures us had misled Calvin himself, and caused him to write in the same strain. See below, p. 49, 50, and compare vol. iii. p. 392-3. This remark may probably apply to a letter of Hardenberg's, which is much insisted on. Melancthon complains of "falsæ criminationes" from his friend Hardenberg. (Cam. Vit. Mel. 277.) A letter of Bullinger's (Fueslin, 65,) was written before any of these proceedings in Saxony, and probably before the Interim had received the sanction of the Imperial diet; when it is acknowledged Melancthon's opposition was "in most express terms." John à Lasco says, (July 28, 1548,) "The divines of Wittemberg do not even mention transubstantiation, much less oppose it, although the Interim sets forth and defends that doctrine." But Melancthon wrote a long paper at Juterboch, in the midst of these discussions, against "the idolatrous blasphemies of the canon of the Mass, and the sophisms with which they were defended." Consil. ii. 60-72. He was not present at the meeting at Juterboch where the " Articles" (qu. the "Saxon Interim") were sanctioned: (Epist. i. 80:) and he complains of a writing of his being rejected, and of things being put in by other hands. Consil. ii. 97. Wiesmann's very uncharitable account (Hist. Sacr. i. p. 1533,) of the motives of the adiaphorists is drawn from Schlusselburg, a Lutheran writer who shewed such extreme weakness and such inveterate prejudice as to sanction the infamous calumny against Calvin, which I have exposed, vol. iii. p. 603, &c; and who is therefore the authority to which Romanists are fond of appealing when they would give currency to that slander.— Finally: Melancthon is charged with assenting at a former period to the statement that justification is "by faith and grace-" meaning the infused grace or virtue of sanctification, in the Romancatholic sense: but he seems rather to smile at the simplicity of Eckius, who did not perceive that the word was admitted only in the apostle's sense, Rom. iv. 16. See Seckendorf, ii. p. 178. I should have gladly ascertained what Melancthon did really consent to submit to at the period of the Interim, by examining the Saxon formulary: but I have in vain inquired for either of the works which would have furnished the information required-the "Triplex Interim," or " Das dreyfache Interim," of Biekius, Leipzig, 8vo. 1721, or what would probably have answered still better, "the Ex Actis Synodicis collecta Expositio," 4to. Wittemb. 1559. But, in the absence of the documents there exhibited, I must rest on my collections from what Melancthon actually wrote in his numerous letters and papers at the time, rather than on the accusations of prejudiced adversaries, or the remonstrances of friends too frequently misled by the charges thus confidently made, and incessantly repeated, without regard to the refutations given to them. November 22, 1831. |