Note 604 — Chapter IV

See in proof of this Luther’s works, vol. i. passim (edit. 1554). The first work of Melanchthon, his Loci Communes, published in 1521, when he followed Luther more obsequiously in his opinions than he did in after-life, is equally replete with the strongest Calvinism. This word is a little awkward in this place; but I am compelled to use it, as most intelligible to the reader; and I conceive that these two reformers went much beyond the language of Augustin, which the schoolmen thought themselves bound to recognise as authority, though they might elude its spirit. I find the first edition of Melanchthon’s Loci Communes in Von der Hardt, Historia Litteraria Reformationis, a work which contains a great deal of curious matter. It is called by him, opus rarissimum, not being in the edition of Melanchthon’s theological works; which some have ascribed to the art of Peucer, whose tenets were widely different.