That Melanchthon failed our Church in the Interim emergency as well as
in the subsequent controversies is generally ascribed to the fact that
he lacked the bracing influence and assistance of Luther. No doubt,
there is a good deal of truth in this assumption. But the true reason
why he did not measure up to the demands of the times and the
expectations of our Church were not mere moral weaknesses, but rather
the errors and false principles to which he was wedded. How could
Melanchthon have approved himself a leader of the Lutherans when he was
out of sympathy with them, doubted some of their most cherished
doctrines, and long ago had struck out on a path deviating from that
mapped out by Luther? True, the bracing which he received from Luther in
the past had repeatedly kept him from publicly sacrificing the truth,
but even in these instances he did not always yield because he was
really convinced, but because he feared the uncompromising spirit of
Luther.
That fear of an open conflict with Luther which, he felt, would result
in a crushing defeat for himself, bulked large among the motives which
prompted him to maintain a semblance of true orthodoxy as long as Luther
lived, is clearly admitted by Melanchthon himself. In his notorious and
most discreditable letter to Carlowitz (counselor of Elector Maurice),
written April 28, 1548, eight days after the meeting at Celle, where he
had debauched his conscience by promising submission to the religious
demands of the Emperor, Melanchthon, pouring forth his feelings and
revealing his true inwardness and his spirit of unionism and
indifferentism as much as admitted that in the past he had been
accustomed to hiding his real views. Here he declared in so many words
that it was not he who started, and was responsible for, the religious
controversy between the Lutherans and Romanists, but rather Luther whose
contentious spirit (he said) also had constantly increased the rupture,
and that under Luther he had suffered "a most shameful servitude."
In the original the letter reads, in part, as follows: "Totum enim me
tibi [Carlowitz] aperio.... Ego, cum decreverit princeps etiamsi quid
non probabo, tamen nihil seditiose faciam, sed vel tacebo, vel cedam,
vel feram, quidquid accidet. _Tuli etiam antea servitutem paene
deformem,_ cum saepe Lutherus magis suae naturae, in qua filoneikia erat
non exigua, quam vel personae suae vel utilitati communi serviret. Et
scio, omnibus aetatibus, ut tempestatum incommoda, ita aliqua in
gubernatione vitia modeste et arte ferenda et dissimulanda esse....
Fortassis natura sum ingenio servili." (_C. R._ 6, 879f.)
Even before Melanchthon had, in private letters to his friends,
displayed a similar vein of ill will toward Luther, whom he evidently
feared because of his own secret doctrinal deviations. (_Lehre und
Wehre_ 1908, 61. 68.) No doubt, as stated above, fear was also among the
motives which induced him to identify himself with the Leipzig Interim.
But evidently his own theological attitude, too, differed little from
the spirit pervading this document. At any rate, the letter to Carlowitz
does not support the assumption that Melanchthon really outraged his own
convictions when he wrote and adopted the Interim. As a matter of fact,
he also continued to defend the Interim; and it was as late as 1556
before he was ready to make even a qualified admission of one of the
errors connected with it.
While, therefore, the Lutheran Church will always gratefully acknowledge
the splendid services which Melanchthon rendered in the work of Luther's
Reformation, it must at the same time be admitted and cannot be gainsaid
that, in the last analysis, Melanchthon, by reason of his deviations
from Luther, which will be set forth more fully in the following, was
the ultimate cause and originator of most of the dissensions which began
to distract the Lutheran Church soon after the death of Luther. Andrew
Musculus, who assisted in drafting the _Formula of Concord,_ brought out
this fact (though in terms too strong) when he characterized Melanchthon
as a "philosophical theologian and a patriarch of all heretics."
(Meusel, _Handl._ 4, 710.) In a way, Melanchthon may even be regarded as
the indirect cause of the Smalcald War and its unfortunate issue,
inasmuch, namely, as his vacillating and compromising attitude and his
incompetent leadership created conditions of internal weakness among the
Lutherans, which invited the aggression of Pope and Emperor.