Philipp Melanchthon: Luther's Right Hand Man
restored in Germany." He feared the overthrow of all order. Hence he made decided concessions to the Catholics at the subsequent conferences and debates on religion. He seems to have been lured by some dream of an Evangelical-Catholic Church. He thought it possible to remain within the Catholic Church, even with the new theology. But he was never a Cryptocatholic, as has been laid to his charge, and while evincing in every other way a spirit of reconciliation, he held fast to the "purified doctrine", and repeatedly qualified as blasphemy the lending of a hand, even in the cause of peace, to any suppression of the truth.
Melancthon considered it his mission to bring together the religious thoughts of the Reformation, to coordinate them and give them a clear and intelligible form. He did not feel himself called upon to seek out their original premises or to speculate on their logical results. His theology bears the substantial impress of his humanistic thought, for he saw in ancient philosophy a precursor of Christianity and sought to reconcile it with Christian Revelation. Even in dogma he took up whatever adapted itself most easily to the general trend of humanistic religious thought, and his dogmatic departures from Luther were a softening of doctrine.
Luther, the prophet among the Reformers, worked tirelessly on his new theology, but he lacked a systemized approach. In 1521 Melanchthon took over this task, writing the first valid summary of Reformation theology, the Loci Communes. Luther felt so enthusiastic about this book that he even wanted to include it in the Bible. In substance it was brought to completion by the edition of 1535. As late as 1521 he had upheld the harsh tenets of fatalism with regard to all events and of determinism with regard to the human will. He subsequently gave "Synergism" his support, as against the deterministic tendency of the Reformation. That God is not the cause of sin, and that man is responsible for his acts, must be firmly maintained. Man's salvation can only be wrought out with the cooperation of his own will, although there can be no question of merit on his part. Likewise he emphasized the necessity of good works from the practical, ethical standpoint. He went so far as to say, in the Loci of 1535, that good works are necessary for eternal life, inasmuch as they must necessarily follow reconciliation with God.
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