res.
However, in repeating the statement that the Gospel embraces both the
preaching of repentance and forgiveness of sins, Melanchthon was not
always sufficiently careful to preclude misapprehension and
misunderstanding. Indeed, some of the statements he made after Luther's
death are misleading, and did not escape the challenge of loyal
Lutherans.

During a disputation in 1548, at which Melanchthon presided, Flacius
criticized the unqualified assertion that the Gospel was a preaching of
repentance, but was satisfied when Melanchthon explained that the term
Gospel was here used in the wider sense, as comprising the entire
doctrine of Christ. However, when Melanchthon, during another
disputation, 1556, declared: The ministry of the Gospel "rebukes the
other sins which the Law shows, as well as the saddest of sins which is
revealed by the Gospel (_hoc tristissimum peccatum, quod in Evangelio
ostenditur_), _viz._, that the world ignores and despises the Son of
God." Flacius considered it his plain duty to register a public protest.
It was a teaching which was, at least in part, the same error that
Luther, and formerly also Melanchthon himself, had denounced when
espoused by Agricola, _viz._, that genuine contrition is wrought, not by
the Law, but by the Gospel; by the preaching, not of the violation of
the Law, but of the violation of the Son. (_C. R._ 12, 634. 640.)

These misleading statements of Melanchthon were religiously cultivated
and zealously defended by the Wittenberg Philippists. With a good deal
of animosity they emphasized that the Gospel in its most proper sense is
also a preaching of repentance (_praedicatio poenitentiae,
Busspredigt_), inasmuch as it revealed the baseness of sin and the
greatness of its offense against God, and, in particular, inasmuch as
the Gospel alone uncovered, rebuked, and condemned the hidden sin
(_arcanum peccatum_) and the chief sin of all, the sin of unbelief
(_incredulitas et neglectio Filii_), which alone condemns a man. These
views, which evidently involved a commingling of the Law and the Gospel,
were set forth by Paul Crell in his Disputation against John Wigand,
1571, and were defended in the _Propositions Concerning the Chief
Controversies of These Times_ (also of 1571), by Pezel and other
Wittenberg theologians. (Frank 2, 277. 323.)

As a consequence, the Philippists, too, were charged with antinomianism,
and were strenuously opposed by such theologians as Flacius, Amsd