nothing less. As a result the controversy continued till
Major's death, in 1574. The Jena professors, notably Flacius, have been
charged with prolonging the controversy from motives of personal
revenge. (Schaff, 276.) No doubt, the Wittenbergers had gone to the very
limit of rousing the animosity and resentment of Flacius (who himself,
indeed, was not blameless in the language used against his opponents).
Major had depicted Flacius as a most base and wicked man, as a cunning
and sly adventurer; as a tyrant, who, after having suppressed the
Wittenbergers, would, as a pope, lord it over all Germany; as an
Antinomian and a despiser of all good works, etc. (Preger 1, 397.) In
the address of October 18, 1567 already referred to, Major said: "There
was in this school [Wittenberg] a vagabond of uncertain origin,
fatherland, religion, and faith who called himself Flacius Illyricus....
He was the first one to spew out against this school, against its
principal Doctors, against the churches of these regions, against the
princes themselves, the poison which he had brewed and imbibed some time
ago, and, having gnawed and consumed with the bite of a serpent the womb
of his mother, to destroy the harmony of these churches, at first by
spreading his dreams, fables, and gossip but now also by calumnies and
manifest lies." (Frank 2, 217.) Melanchthon, too, had repeatedly written
in a similar vein. In an _Opinion_ of his, dated March 4, 1558, we read:
"Even if they [Flacius and his adherents] condemn and banish me, I am
well satisfied; for I do not desire to associate with them, because I
well know that the said Illyricus with his adherents does not seek the
honor of God, but publicly opposes the truth, and as yet has never
declared himself concerning the entire sum of Christian doctrine." (_C.
R._ 9, 463. 476. 311.) In an _Opinion_ of March 9, 1559, Melanchthon
even insinuated that Flacius denied the Trinity. (763.) Before this,
August, 1549, he had written to Fabricius: "The Slavic runagate (Slavus
drapetes) received many benefits from our Academy and from me. But we
have nursed a serpent in our bosom. He deserves to be branded on his
forehead as the Macedonian king did with a soldier: 'Ungrateful
stranger, xevnos acharistos.' Nor do I believe that the source of his
hatred is any other than that the place of Cruciger was not given to
him. But I omit these disagreeable narrations." (7, 449. 478 ff.) This
personal abuse, however, was not