fatigued with labor
and overwhelmed with cares, you, as an intimate friend, familiarly laid
your head upon my breast: Would to God I might die on this bosom! But
afterwards I have wished a thousand times that we might be granted to be
together. You would certainly have been more courageous to engage in
battle and stronger to despise envy, and disregard false accusations. In
this way, too, the wickedness of many would have been restrained whose
audacity to revile grew from your pliability, as they called it. _O
Philippe Melanchthon! Te enim appello, qui apud Deum cum Christo vivis,
nosque illic exspectas, donec tecum in beatam quietem colligamur.
Dixisti centies, quum fessus laboribus et molestiis oppressus caput
familiariter in sinum meum deponeres: Utinam, utinam moriar in hoc sinu!
Ego vero millies postea optavi nobis contingere, ut simul essemus. Certe
animosior fuisses ad obeunda certamina et ad spernendam invidiam
falsasque criminationes pro nihilo ducendas fortior. Hoc quoque modo
cohibita fuisset multorum improbitos, quibus ex tua mollitie, quam
vocabant, crevit insultandi audacia_." (_C. R._ 37 [_Calvini Opp_. 9],
461f.) It was not Melanchthon, but Westphal, who disputed Calvin's claim
by publishing (1557) extracts from Melanchthon's former writings under
the title: _Clarissimi Viri Ph. Melanchthonis Sententia de Coena Domini,
ex scriptis eius collecta_. But, alas, the voice of the later
Melanchthon was not that of the former!

205. Advising the Crypto-Calvinists.

In various other ways Melanchthon showed his impatience with the
defenders of Luther's doctrine and his sympathy with their Calvinistic
opponents. When Timann of Bremen, who sided with Westphal, opposed
Hardenberg, a secret, but decided Calvinist, Melanchthon admonished the
latter not to rush into a conflict with his colleagues, but to
dissimulate. He says in a letter of April 23, 1556: "_Te autem oro, ne
properes ad certamen cum collegis. Oro etiam, ut multa dissimules_."
(_C. R._ 8, 736.) Another letter (May 9, 1557), in which he advises
Hardenberg how to proceed against his opponents, begins as follows:
"Reverend Sir and Dear Brother. As you see, not only the controversy,
but also the madness (_rabies_) of the writers who establish the
bread-worship is growing." (9, 154.) He meant theologians who, like
Timann and Westphal, defended Luther's doctrine that in the Lord's
Supper the bread is truly the body of Christ and the wine truly the
blood of Ch