§ 108. THE MARBURG CONFERENCE CONTINUED. 649
seems well versed in letters, in spite of Minerva and the Muses.” He adds that the Landgrave was the most attentive hearer.
The laymen who attended the Conference seem to have been convinced by the Swiss arguments. The Landgrave declared that he would now believe the simple words of Christ, rather than the subtle interpretations of men. He desired Zwingli to remove to Marburg, and take charge of the ecclesiastical organization of Hesse. Shortly before his death he confessed that Zwingli had convinced him at Marburg. But more important is the conversion of Lambert of Avignon, who had heretofore been a Lutheran, but could not resist the force of the arguments on the other side. “I had firmly resolved,” he wrote to a friend soon after the Conference, “not to listen to the words of men, or to allow myself to be influenced by the favor of men, but to be like a blank paper on which the finger of God should write his truth. He wrote those doctrines on my heart which Zwingli developed out of the word of God.” Even the later change of Melanchthon, who declined the brotherhood with the Swiss as strongly as Luther, may perhaps be- traced to impressions which he received at Marburg.
If the leaders of the two evangelical confessions could meet to-day on earth, they would gladly shake hands of brotherhood, as they have done long since in heaven.
The Conference did not effect the desired union, and the unfortunate strife broke out again. Nevertheless, it was by no means a total failure. It prepared the way for the Augsburg Confession, the chief symbol of the Lutheran Church. More than this, it served as an encouragement to peace movements of future generations.1 It produced the first formulated consensus between the two confessions in four-
1 Comp. the remarks of Ranke, III. 124 sqq. He sees the significance of the Conference in the fact that the two parties, in spite of the theological difference, professed the same evangelical faith.
650 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1580.
teen important articles, and in the better part of the fifteenth, leaving only the corporal presence and oral manducation in dispute. It was well that such a margin was left. Without liberty in non-essentials, there can never be a union among intelligent Christians. Good and holy men will always differ on the mode of the real presence, and on many other points of doctrine, as well as government and worship. The time was not ripe for evangelical catholicity ; but the spirit of the document survived the controversies, and manifests itself wherever Christian hearts and minds rise above the narrow partition walls of sectarian bigotry. Uniformity, even if possible, would not be desirable. God’s ways point to unity in diversity, and diversity in unity.
It was during the fiercest dogmatic controversies and the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War, that a prophetic voice whispered to future generations the watchword of Christian peacemakers, which was unheeded in a century of intolerance, and forgotten in a century of indifference, but resounds with increased force in a century of revival and re-union:
“IN ESSENTIALS UNITY, IN NON-ESSENTIALS LIBERTY, IN ALL THINGS CHARITY.”
NOTE
On the Origin of the Sentence: ‘‘ In necessariis unitas, in non-necessariis (or, dubiis) libertas, in utrisque (or, omnibus) caritas.”’
This famous motto of Christian Irenics, which I have slightly modified in the text, is often falsely attributed to St. Augustin (whose creed would not allow it, though his heart might have approved of it), but is of much later origin. It appears for the first time in Germany, A.D. 1627 and 1628, among peaceful divines of the Lutheran and German Reformed churches, and found a hearty welcome among moderate divines in England.
The authorship has recently been traced to RUPERTUS MELDENIUS, an otherwise unknown divine, and author of a remarkable tract in which the sentence first occurs. He gave classical expression to the irenic sentiments of such divines as Calixtus of Helmstadt, David Pareus of Heidelberg, Crocius of Marburg, John Valentin Andree of Wiirttemberg, John Arnd of Zelle, Georg Frank of Francfort-on-the Oder, the brothers Bergius in