388 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
of the grave, and would have died if Luther had not prayed him out of the jaws of the king of terrors. What a contrast between Melanchthon at Worms in 1540, and Luther at Worms in 1521 ! At the Diet of Regensburg, in 1541, he felt no better. His son was sick, and he dreamed that he had died. He read disaster and war in the stars. His letters to intimate friends are full of grief and anxious forebodings. " I am devoured by a desire for a better life," he wrote to one of them. He was oppressed by a sense of the responsibility that rested upon him as the spokesman and leader of the Reformation in the declining years of Luther, who had been formerly his inspiration and strength. It is natural that in this condition of mind he looked for a new support, and this he found in Calvin. We can thus easily understand his wish to die in his arms. But Calvin himself, though more calm and composed in regard to public affairs, was, as we have seen, deeply distressed at Regensburg by news of the ravages of the pestilence among his friends at Strassburg, besides being harassed by multiplying petitions to return to Geneva. These troubles and afflictions brought their hearts nearer to each other.
In their first personal interview at Frankfurt on the Main, in February, 1539, they at once became intimate, and freely discussed the burning questions of the day, relating to doctrine, discipline, and worship.^
As to doctrine, Calvin had previously sent to Melanchthon a summary, in twelve articles, on the crucial topic of the real presence. To these Melanchthon assented without dispute,^ but confessed that he had no hope of satisfying those
1 Calvin wrote to Farel, after his return to Strassburg, at the end of March, 1539: " Gum. Philippo fuit niihi multis de rebus colloquium."
2 "Sine controversia ipse assentitur." Calvin adds: " de ipso (Afel.) nihil dubita, quin penitus nobiscum sentiat." Herminjard, V. 269. In a previous letter to Farel, October, 1538 (in Herminjard, V. 146 and note 24), he informed Farel that he had sent twelve articles of agreement with a letter to Melanchthon from Strassburg. The articles are lost, but may yet be recovered.
§ 90. CALVIN AND MELANCHTHON. 389
who obstinately insisted on a more gross and palpable presence.^ Yet he was anxious that the present agreement, such as it was, might be cherished until at length the Lord shall lead both sides into the unity of his own truth. This is no doubt the reason why he himself refrained from such a full and unequivocal public expression of his own view as might lead to a rupture in the Lutheran Church. He went as far as he deemed it prudent by modifying the tenth article of the Augsburg Confession, and omitting the anti-Zwinglian clause (1540).
As to ecclesiastical discipline, Melanchthon deplored the want of it in Germany, but could see no prospect of improvement, till the people would learn to distinguish the yoke of Christ from the papal tyranny.
As to worship, Calvin frankly expressed his objection to many ceremonies, which seemed to him to border too closely on Judaism. 2 He was opposed to chanting in Latin, to pictures and candles in churches, to exorcism in baptism, and the like. Melanchthon was reluctant to discuss this point, but admitted that there was an excess of trifling or unnecessary Roman Catholic rites retained in deference to the judgment of the Canonists, and expressed the hope that some of them would be abandoned by degrees.
After the Colloquy at Regensburg the two Reformers saw each other no more, but continued to correspond as far as
1 " Sed fatetur, esse in ilia parte nonnullos qui crassius aliquid reqnirant : atque id tanta pervicacia, ne dicam tyrannide, ut diu in pericuJo fuerit, quod eum videbant a sno sensu nonnihil alienum." Hemiinjard, V. 269. Those men who outluthered Luther, were not satisfied witli the words of institution, simpliciter, but demanded such scholastic terms as suhstantialiter, essentialiter, corporaliter, quantitative, idiiquitcditer, carnaliter. When Mattliaeus Zell, preacher in tlie Minster at Strassburg, told Melanchthon (in 1536) that he abhorred these terms as diabolical additions, Melanchthon assented. See Rohrich Mittheilungen aus der Geschichte der evang. Kirche des Elsasses, III. 133, as quoted by Stahelin, I. 169.
2 Letter to Farel, April, 1539 (Herminjard, V. 292) : " Nuper PhiUppo in faciem non dissimulavi, quin mihi admodum ilia ceremoniarum copia displiceret. Vtderi enim mihi formam quam tenent non procul esse a Judaismo."