conference further attempts were made to settle the Reformation controversy by a compromise, and Melanchthon, from his conciliatory spirit and facility of access, appeared to the defenders of the old faith the fittest of the reformers to deal with. His historical instinct led him ever to revert to the original unity of the church, and to regard subsequent errors as excrescences rather than proofs of an essentially anti-Christian system. He was weary of the rabies theologorum, and dreamed that the evangelical leaven, if tolerated, would purify the church’s life and doctrine. In 1537, when the Protestant divines signed the Lutheran Articles of Schmalkalden, Melanchthon appended to his signature the reservation that he would admit of a pope provided he allowed the gospel and did not claim to rule by divine right.
The year after Luther’s death, when the battle of Mühlberg (1547) had given a seemingly crushing blow to the Protestant cause, an attempt was made to weld together the evangelical and the papal doctrines, which resulted in the compilation by Pflug, Sidonius and Agricola of the Augsburg “Interim.” This was proposed to the two parties in Germany as a provisional ground of agreement till the decision of the Council of Trent. Melanchthon, on being referred to, declared that, though the Interim was inadmissible, yet so far as matters of indifference (adiaphora) were concerned it might be received. Hence arose that “adiaphoristic” controversy in connexion with which he has been misrepresented as holding among matters of indifference such cardinal doctrines as justification by faith, the number of the sacraments, as well as the dominion of the pope, feast-days, and so on. The fact is that Melanchthon sought, not to minimize differences, but to veil them under an intentional obscurity of expression. Thus he allowed the necessity of good works to salvation, but not in the old sense; proposed to allow the seven sacraments, but only as rites which had no inherent efficacy to salvation, and so on. He afterwards retracted his compliance with the adiaphora, and never really swerved from the views set forth in the Loci communes; but he regarded the surrender of more perfect for less perfect forms of truth or of expression as a painful sacrifice rendered to the weakness of erring brethren. Luther, though he had probably uttered in private certain expressions of dissatisfaction with Melanchthon, maintained unbroken friendship with him; but after Luther’s death certain smaller men formed a party emphasizing the extremest points of his doctrine.[1] Hence the later years of Melanchthon were occupied with controversies within the Evangelical church, and fruitless conferences with his Romanist adversaries. He died in his sixty-third year, on the 19th of April 1560, and his body was laid beside that of Martin Luther in the Schlosskirche at Wittenberg.
His ready pen, clear thought and elegant style, made him the scribe of the Reformation, most public documents on that side being drawn up by him. He never attained entire independence of Luther, though he gradually modified some of his positions from those of the pure Lutherism with which he set out. His development is chiefly noteworthy in regard to these two leading points—the relation of the evangelium or doctrine of free grace (1) to free will and moral ability, and (2) to the law and poenitentia or the good works connected with repentance. At first Luther’s cardinal doctrine of grace appeared to Melanchthon inconsistent with any view of free will; and, following Luther, he renounced Aristotle and philosophy in general, since “philosophers attribute everything to human power, while the sacred writings represent all moral power as lost by the fall.” In the first edition of the Loci (1521) he held, to the length of fatalism, the Augustinian doctrine of irresistible grace, working according to God’s immutable decrees, and denied freedom of will in matters civil and religious alike. In the Augsburg Confession (1530), which was largely due to him, freedom is claimed for the will in non-religious matters, and in the Loci of 1533 he calls the denial of freedom Stoicism, and holds that in justification there is a certain causality, though not worthiness, in the recipient, subordinate to the Divine causality. In 1535, combating Laurentius Valla, he did not deny the spiritual incapacity of the will per se, but held that this is strengthened by the word of God, to which it can cleave. The will co-operates with the word and the Holy Spirit. Finally, in 1543, he says that the cause of the difference of final destiny among men lies in the different method of treating grace which is possible to believers as to others. Man may pray for help and reject grace. This he calls free will, as the power of laying hold of grace. Melanchthon’s doctrine of the three concurrent causes in conversion, viz. the Holy Spirit, the word, and the human will, suggested the semi-Pelagian position called Synergism, which was held by some of his immediate followers.
In regard to the relation of grace to repentance and good works, Luther was disposed to make faith itself the principle of sanctification. Melanchthon, however, for whom ethics possessed a special interest, laid more stress on the law. He began to do this in 1527 in the Libellus visitatorius, which urges pastors to instruct their people in the necessity of repentance, and to bring the threatenings of the law to bear upon men in order to faith. This brought down upon him the opposition of the Antinomian Johannes Agricola. In the Loci of 1535 Melanchthon sought to put the fact of the co-existence of justification and good works in the believer on a secure basis by declaring the latter necessary to eternal life, though the believer’s destiny thereto is already fully guaranteed in his justification. In the Loci of 1543 he did not retain the doctrine of the necessity of good works in order to salvation, and to this he added, in the Leipzig Interim, “that this in no way countenances the error that eternal life is merited by the worthiness of our own works.” Melanchthon was led to lay more and more stress upon the law and moral ideas; but the basis of the relation of faith and good works was never clearly brought out by him, and he at length fell back on his original position, that we have justification and inheritance of bliss in and by Christ alone, and that good works are necessary by reason of immutable Divine command.
Bibliography.—The principal works of Melanchthon, with the bulk of his correspondence, are contained in the Corpus reformatorum (vols. i.–xxviii.; Halle, 1834–1850), edited by Bretschneider and Bindseil, to which must be added Bindseil’s Supplementa (Halle, 1874). Melanchthon’s earliest and best biographer was his friend Joachim Camerarius (1566), a new annotated edition of which is much needed. The best modern life is that by Georg Ellinger (Berlin, 1902); next is that of Karl Schmidt (Elberfeld, 1861). The celebration in 1897 of the 400th anniversary of Melanchthon’s birth produced many short biographies and Festreden, among them works by J. W. Richard (New York and London, 1898); George Wilson (London, 1897); Karl Sell (Halle, 1897); Ferdinand Cohrs (Halle, 1897); Beyschlag and Harnack (1897). Richard Rothe’s Festrede (1860) also is good. The most learned of modern Melanchthon scholars was probably Karl Hartfelder, who wrote Philipp Melanchthon als Praeceptor Germaniae (Berlin, 1899); Melanchthoniana paedagogica (Leipzig, 1892), giving in the first named two full bibliographies, one of all works written on Melanchthon, the other of all works written by him (in chronological order). Hartfelder believed that a good deal of unpublished material is still left in German and foreign libraries. Thus three long unknown letters are published in the Quellen und Forschungen of the Königl. Preuss. Inst. Hist. at Rome, vol. ii. Two are to the Cardinal of Augsburg and one to Lazarus von Schwendi. Melanchthon was on his way to the Council of Trent as delegate of the elector of Saxony and the cardinal had offered to meet him at Dillingen. He writes “ingeminating peace,” deploring that the council was not a national synod, which would have been a better means of arriving at the truth.
MELANESIA, one of the three great divisions of the oceanic
islands in the central and western Pacific. It embraces the
Bismarck Archipelago, N.E. of New Guinea, the Louisiade,
Solomon, Santa Cruz, New Hebrides and Loyalty islands, New
Caledonia, Fiji and intervening small groups. The name (Gr.
μέλας, black, and νῆσος, island) is derived from the black
colour of the prevailing native race, the Papuan and its allied
tribes. Many of these differ widely from the parent race, but
all the Melanesian peoples have certain common characteristics
which distinguish them sharply from the inhabitants of Polynesia
and Micronesia. Their civilization is lower. The Melanesians
are mostly “negroid,” nearly black, with crisp, curly hair
elaborately dressed; their women hold a much lower position
than among the Polynesians; their institutions, social, political
and religious, are simpler, their manners ruder; they have few
or no traditions; cannibalism, in different degrees, is almost
universal; but their artistic skill and taste, as with some
of the lower African negroes, are remarkable, and they are
amenable to discipline and fair treatment. Their languages,
which exhibit considerable difference among themselves, have
features which mark them off clearly from the Polynesian,
notwithstanding certain fundamental relations with the latter.
See R. H. Codrington, The Melanesian Languages (Oxford, 1885) and The Melanesians (Oxford, 1891); the articles Papuans and Pacific Ocean; also those on the several island-groups, &c.
- ↑ It must be admitted, however, that Matthias Flacius saved the Reformation.
