humility and fraternal love. The enemies of the Reformation could not but feel the power of his example, nor cease to regret that his talents and character did not continue to support the declining hierarchy.

In the following pages, we propose to detail, at some length, the principal events in the life of Melanchthon, especially those which relate to his domestic and social character. These have been, for the most part, passed by in the histories of the Refor mation, and many of them in the Lives of Melanchthon. The doctrines of the Reformers are so well known, as well as the general history of the period, that it will be unnecessary to dwell upon them at any length. The main source from which we have drawn our materials, is the work of Frederic Galle, published at Halle, in 1840, in 475 pp. 8vo., under the title, "Versuch einer Characteristik Melanchthons als Theologen und einer Entwickelung seines Lehrbegriffs." It was first composed in the form of an essay, to which the Theological Faculty of the University of Halle awarded a prize in 1837. The subject was afterwards thoroughly reïnvestigated, and the treatise greatly enlarged. The production bears every mark of having come from an able and candid writer. Its special value, above all the preceding Memoirs of the Reformer, consists in the ample use which the author makes of the. Correspondence of Melanchthon, collected and published by Dr. Bretschneider, in six vols. quarto, under the general title of Corpus Reformatorum. Much of this correspon. dence existed before only in manuscript.

Melanchthon's Birth and Parentage.

Philip Melanchthon was born Feb. 16, 1497. His father, George Schwarzerd, was a native of Heidelberg. He was a skilful manufacturer of various kinds of armor, and as such was held, in that turbulent age, in high estimation. He often visited the courts of the princes, and enjoyed the special favor of the emperor Maximilian. As early as 1496, he had taken up his abode in Bretten, a small town in Baden, near Carlsruhe, then in the Palatinate of the Rhine. Here he became connected in marriage with Barbara Reuter, daughter of the burgomaster of the place. He is represented as a man of decided piety and uncommonly exact and fervent in his devotions, notwithstanding that the business in which he was engaged would not seem to be

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The Family of Melanchthon.

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favorable to the cultivation of personal religion. It is mentioned, as a characteristic fact, that he was in the habit of rising from his bed at midnight, in order to repeat his customary prayer. Hence the Christian education of his family was an object of paramount importance. In this duty he found an efficient co-laborer in his wife, who is described as a discreet and pious woman,' who looked well to the ways of her household, and who sought, in the frequent absences of her husband, to impress on the minds of her children, five in number, the lessons of virtue and piety which they had received from their father, and to keep them as far as possible from the contaminations of vice. Her father, in the days of his old age, found no greater delight than in amusing and instructing his grandchildren. Philip especially attracted his atten. tion, as a boy of extraordinary intellectual promise.

The father of Melanchthon died in 1507, after lingering several years under a disease, caused, as it was supposed, by his drinking water from a poisoned well. Three days before his death, he said to his sons: "Since I must now die, I desire that my children may be members of the church, that they may live in communion with it, may have the knowledge of God and finally be happy in eternal glory." Melanchthon mentions this in the Postils and subjoins: "I recollect my father said these things when he blessed me before his death." Nine days before his own decease, he repeated the same words to his children.

Early Education of Melanchthon.

Melanchthon appears to have enjoyed all the advantages for education which were then accessible. After spending a short time in the elementary school at Bretten, he was placed under the care of John Hungarus, a domestic tutor, whose instructions 1 Winsheim says, "mater Barbara matrona fuit honestissima, singulari sapientia et morum gravitate praedita." A stanza which was frequently on her lips was this:

"He who is a freër spender

Then his plough or toil can render,

Sure of ruin slow or fast,

May perhaps be hanged at last."

Melanchthon sometimes said to his pupils: "Didici hoc a mea matre, vos etiam observate." She remained twelve years a widow after the death of her first husband. She was subsequently twice married, first to Christopher Kolbe, a citizen of Bretten, and after his death to Melchior Hechel. Melanchthon had six brothers and sisters in-law.

he was accustomed, in later life, strongly to commend. "I had a teacher," he wrote, "who was an excellent grammarian and who passed an honorable old age in preaching the gospel at Pforzheim. He compelled me, in studying grammar, to go through with the constructions, and also to give the rules for twenty or thirty lines of Virgil. He allowed me to omit nothing. Whenever I fell into error, he corrected me, yet with fitting moderation. In this manner he made me a grammarian. He was an excellent man; he loved me as a son, and I him as a father, and I hope we shall shortly meet in everlasting glory. I loved him, though his discipline was severe; yet it was not severity, but a paternal chastisement, exciting me to diligence. He compelled me to look out the rules in the evening so that I could recite them."

During two years Melanchthon attended the public school at Pforzheim, a town a few miles south of Bretten, in Baden. The school, then under the charge of George Simler, had attained a high rank throughout Germany. Here Melanchthon made such rapid progress that soon after he had completed his twelfth year, he was prepared to enter the University of Heidelberg. At this celebrated institution he remained three years, and devoted him. self particularly to the study of the classics. He lived in the house of Doctor Pallas, and taught the sons of the count of Löwenstein. He was distinguished above all his youthful compan. ions, by his acquaintance with the Greek language. "Where shall I find a Grecian?" once exclaimed a teacher, as he propounded a difficult question. With one voice, all the scholars cried out: "Melanchthon! Melanchthon!" He was admitted to the degree of bachelor of arts, June 10, 1511. In 1512 he repaired to Tübingen, where he soon received a master's degree, and where he confirmed his reputation, partly by his lectures on the ancient classics and partly by the books which he published, especially his Greek Grammar. He was now ranked among the ablest philologists of his age. In 1516, Erasmus wrote: "What promise does not that youth, or boy, as we might almost term him, Philip Melanchthon, hold out? He is about equally eminent in his knowledge of Latin and Greek. What acuteness in argu

1 About this time, he changed his name, at the suggestion of Reuchlin, from Schwarzerd to the more euphonic one of Melanchthon, both words signifying in their respective languages, black earth. This change of names was then not uncommon, e. g. Reuchlin, originally Reuch, as in Latin, fumus, fumulus ; Erasmus's name in Dutch was Gerhard, in Latin, Desiderius.

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His literary and religious Education.

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ment! What purity and elegance of diction! What manifold knowledge! What delicacy and extraordinary tenderness of feeling!!"

Melanchthon did not, however, confine his attention to classical literature. In other branches of knowledge he felt a deep interest. While at Heidelberg, he pursued with much zeal the study of mathematics and astronomy, under the direction of Conrad Helvetius, and at Tübingen he attended the lectures of Stöffler, who was still more distinguished. "I remember," he writes, "that when I and Oecolampadius were reading Hesiod together, and a certain strange desire seized me, though I was then a mere youth, of comprehending, among other things relating to the rising and setting of the stars, those words, "quadraginta dies latere Pleiades," no one of the multitude at Tübingen, could aid us, except Stöffler." While here Melanchthon also studied the principles of law and medicine. Still, he attended with special zeal to pursuits of a philosophical nature. The works of Aristotle, which he had long before cursorily perused in defective translations, he now studied in the original, preparing himself to edit an edition of some of them. Subsequently these works engrossed much of his attention. The thoroughness of his philosophical training may be inferred from the fact, that the controversy between the Nominalists and Realists, which was then raging at Tübingen, was by his exertions set at rest; the young disputant contending on the side of the Nominalists, that universal ideas have no reality in truth, but are mere names or mental abstractions.

Though Melanchthon's religious education, while he was under the parental roof, had been conducted in some respects on false principles, yet it had served to implant within him a fresh and vigorous faith. While a boy he had the greatest delight in public worship, and was particularly attached to the lives of the saints. “I recollect,” he says in after life, "what joy it gave us when we were lads, to read the verses which are found in the legends of the saints. Similar lines were recited by the preachers in the church, and when we imitated the sermons at home, we repeated those verses. Subsequently, women and girls brought something to our altar, as was customary in the church. If we had had better instructors at that time, it would have been more useful to us. Still, it was a part of domestic education to

1 Comm. in Ep. ad Thess.

employ children with such things, rather than to allow them to roam about in the streets with their boisterous noises."

With these early tendencies to piety, it is not strange that Melanchthon, after extensive excursions into various fields of knowledge, should turn with earnest love to the study of theology. At that time, however, there was little in this department of science as studied in the universities, which could satisfy the mind. With an almost total neglect of practical theology, a system made up of abstruse and hair-splitting propositions, was the great object of pursuit, which, though useful in sharpening the intellect and worthy of admiration as a monument of human ingenuity, could never satisfy, for any length of time, truly religious feelings. Melanchthon's youthful enthusiasm was excited and absorbed by this ingenious superstructure. He sat attentively at the feet of Lempus, the theological master at Tübingen, and the most celebrated teacher in that department, and saw spread out on a black tablet, figures in chalk, designed to aid where verbal demonstrations were not sufficient. Thus for example, the doctrine of transubstantiation was depicted. Still, Melanchthon sought for instruction, not merely in the lecture-room and in the volumes of the earlier Scholastics, but with his predilections for Nominalism, he enjoyed, for some time, great satisfaction in the writings of William Occam, the restorer of this theory.' But this could last only for a time. Melanchthon had now found another and purer source of religious knowledge; he had obtained from Reuchlin a copy of the Bible. Previously his great relative2 had given him a number of valuable books, while he lived at Pforzheim with Reuchlin's brother George. But the Scriptures were the most precious treasure. With what love and de

1 Thus in 1521 he wrote: "Tu vero, Occhame, deliciae quondam meae." Yet in 1529, he says to Camerarius: "I thank you for the Dialogues of Occain, yet they are more frigid than I had supposed. In the whole system there is plainly no solid instruction." Luther, it is well known, had originally great reverence for the "Singular Doctor."

He was related to Melanchthon on the mother's side. Melanchthon, in his Postils mentions the following incident: "I heard Reuchlin telling that he had heard the lectures of Argyropylus in Italy on Thucydides. When he entered the lecture-room, he stated in reply to the inquiry of the teacher, that he had come to listen to something on the Greek language. Being then asked; Do you understand Greek at all, he answered, I do. Read, says Argyropylus. Reuchlin thereupon read a passage. Do you understand it, asked the lecturer? Somewhat, was the reply. What is the sense? The young German gave it as well as he could. O, said the lecturer, Greece, in our exile, has come over the Alps."