368 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1530.
from the Oxford University Press before publication, and three million copies were sold in less than a year (1881). The text was telegraphed from New York to Chicago in advance of the arrival of the book. Over thirty reprints appeared in the United States. The Revised Old Testament excited less interest, but tens of thousands of copies were sold on the day of publication (1885), and several American editions were issued. The Bible, after all, is, the most popular book in the world, and constantly increasing in power and’ influence, especially with the English-speaking race. (For particulars on the English Revision, see Schaff’s Companion to the Greek Testament and the English Version, New York, 3d ed., 1888, pp. 404 sqq., and the extensive Revision literature, pp. 371 sqq.)
§ 64. Melanchthon’s Theology.
See Literature in ὃ 38, pp. 182 sq. The 21st vol. of the ‘“‘Corpus Refermatorum ”’ (1106 fol. pages) is devoted to the various editions of Melanchthon’s Loci Theologici, and gives bibliographical lists (fol. 59 sqq.; 561 sqq.), and also an earlier outline from an unpublished MS. Comp. CARL ScHMIDT, Phil. Mel., pp. 64-75; and on Melanchthon’s doctrinal changes, SCHAFF, — Creeds of Christendom, vol. I. 261 sqq.
While Luther translated the New Testament on the Wartburg, Melanchthon prepared the first system of Protestant theology at Wittenberg. Both drew from the same fountain, and labored for the same end, but in different ways. Luther built up the Reformation among the people in the German tongue; Melanchthon gave it methodical shape for scholars by his Latin writings. The former worked in the quarries, and cut the rough blocks of granite; the latter constructed the blocks into a habitable building. Luther expressed a modest self-estimate, and a high estimate of his friend, when he said that his superiority was more “in the rhetorical way,” while Melanchthon was “a better logician and reasoner.”
Melanchthon finished his ‘“‘ Theological Common-Places ” or Ground-Thoughts (Loci Communes or Loci Theologict), in April, 1521, and sent the proof-sheets to Luther on the Wartburg. They appeared for the first time before the close of that year.1
1 Under the title: Loci communes rerum theologicarum seu hypotyposes theologicw, Wittenberg, 1521. Bindseil puts the publication in December.
§ 064. MELANCHTHON’S THEOLOGY. 369
This book marks an epoch in the history of theology. It grew out of exegetical lectures on the Epistle to the Romans, the Magna Charta of the evangelical system. It is an exposition of the leading doctrines of sin and grace, repentance and salvation. It is clear, fresh, thoroughly biblical, and practical. Its main object is to show that man cannot be saved by works of the law or by his own merits, but only by the free grace of God in Christ as revealed in the gospel. It presents the living soul of divinity, in striking contrast to the dry bones of degenerate scholasticism with its endless theses, antitheses, definitions, divisions, and subdivisions.
The first edition was written in the interest of practical Christianity rather than scientific theology. It is meagre in the range of topics, and defective in execution. It is confined to anthropology and soteriology, and barely mentions the metaphysical doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation, as transcendent mysteries to be adored rather than curiously discussed. It has a polemical bearing against the Romanists, in view of the recent condemnation of Luther by the Sorbonne. It also contains some crude and extreme opinions which the author afterwards abandoned. Altogether in its first shape it was an unripe production, though most remarkable if we consider the youth of the author, who was then only twenty-four years of age.
Melanchthon shared at first Luther’s antipathy to scholastic theology; but he learned to distinguish between pure and legitimate scholasticism and a barren formalism, as also between the Aristotelian philosophy itself and the skeleton of it which was worshiped as an idol in the universities at that time. He knew especially the value of Aristotle’s ethics, wrote a commentary on the same (1529), and made important
I have a copy of the Leipzig ed. of M.D.LIX., which numbers 858 pages without indices, and bears the title: Loci Precipui Theologici. Nune denuo cura et diligentia summa recogniti, multisque in locis copiose illustrati, cum appendice disputationis de conjugio, etc.