and overwhelmed with sorrow. Luther, who had more courage, wrote him many excellent letters of consolation. Archbishop Cranmer had a very great regard for Melanethon, whom he invited to England, and expected there. Peter Martyr, and his companion Ochinus, had their annual allowance from the king; but some more extraordinary annuity was intended for Melancthon. Francis I. king of France, had a great love for learning and learned men. He established professors of the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin languages at Paris. The queen of Navarre often talked to the king her brother of a very good man, as she said, who was called Philip Melancthon, whom she was continually praising as the most learned man of his time; and that she did not doubt, but if so holy and able a man could confer with the doctors of the Sarbonne, they would quickly find the means of restoring peace to the church, which was then divided by controversies. Whereupon this prince wrote to Melancthon, and invited him to Paris, to join his endeavours with the French divines to restore the ancient discipline of the church. This letter was dated at Guise, June 28, 1535, and declared the pleasure the king had, that Melancthon was disposed to come into France, to endeavour to pacify the controversies. Melancthon wrote to the king, September 28, following, and assured him of his good intentions; but that he was sorry he had not surmounted the obstacles to his journey. Langey was ordered to sound Melancthon, if he was inclined to change his chair of theology at Wittenberg, whose income was only two hundred crowns a year, for a royal professor's chair in the university of Paris, at twelve hundred crowns a year. Bayle acquaints us, the elector of Saxony could not be prevailed upon to grant Melancthon the liberty of going to France, and wrote his excuses to Francis I. The king of England also desired to see Melancthon: but neither of these two monarchs ever saw him. However, Melancthon sent a small piece into France, which contained his advices about reconciling the controversies. Melancthon, in 1541, assisted at the conferences of Spires and Ratisbon, where the controversies between the Romanists and Protestants were warmly disputed. At the former, the Papists chose Eckius, and the Protestants appointed. Melancthon, to confer about the points in controversy, and and agreed that they should begin to discourse about original sin. They entered upon it, and continued the conference three days, when Nicholas Granville, who was then prime minister to the emperor, and his commissioner at the conference, received a letter from his imperial majesty, which ordered that the conference should be discontinued, and all things referred to the diet of Ratisbon, where the Protestants were ordered to meet. This diet was opened in March, in the presence of the emperor, who appointed Eckius, Pflugius, and Gropper, to manage it for the Romanists; and, for the Protestants, Melancthon, Bucer, and Pistorius. He commanded them to lay aside all passion, and to respect the glory of God only in that conference. Frederic, brother to the elector palatine, was appointed president; who opened the conference on the 27th of April. In the course of these disputes Melancthon gained a complete victory over Eckius; who dared no more to shew his face in the controversy. In 1543, Melancthon went to the elector of Cologne, to assist him in introducing a reformation into his diocese, which proved ineffectual. Bucer and Pistorius assisted Melancthon in drawing up the articles for the elector: but Gropper composed a treatise against those articles, and the divines of Cologne stood so firm against their archbishop, that he was unable to introduce the Protestant religion in his electorate. However, the elector of Cologne, and the ejector palatine, renounced Popery. Melancthon had two sons, and two daughters, by Catharine Crappin, the daughter of a burgomaster of Wittenberg, whom he married in 1520, and lived very happily with till 1557, when she died. His daughter Anne was married to George Sabinus, of Wittenberg, in 1536, when she was only fourteen years old. Sabinus was one of the best poets of his time; and Erasmus, in 1534, had highly recommended him to Melancthon. Anne understood Latin well, and was very handsome. Her father loved her tenderly but there had been several quarrels between the father-in-law and the son-in-law; because Sabinus was ambitious to obtain civil employments, and disliked the humility of Melancthon, who confined himself to literary employments, and would be at no trouble to advance his children. Sabinus, in 1543, carried his wife into Prussia, to the great grief of Melancthon; and she died at Konigsberg nigsberg in 1547. Melancthon's other daughter was married, in 1550, to Gasper Peucer, who was an able physician, and was very much persecuted. Melancthon had much of his time taken up by the affair of the Interim. He attended seven conferences upon this subject in 1548; and wrote all the pieces that were presented there, as also the censure of that Interim. About this time Melancthon was expected in England, by Edward VI. to which he was excited by bishop Latimer, the great court preacher, who said before the young monarch, in one of his sermons; I hear say, Mr. Melancthon, that great clerk, should come hither. I would wish him, and such as he is, two hundred pounds a year. The king should never want it in his coffers at the year's end.” Melancthon was one of the deputies, whom Maurice, elector of Saxony, was to send to the council of Trent in 1552. He waited some time at Nuremberg for a safe-conduct; but he returned from thence to Wittemberg, on account of the war which was ready to break out. His last conference with the doctors of the Romish communion was at Worms, in 1557; and of the dissentions that afflicted him, there was none more violent than that which was raised by Flaccius Illyricus. Melancthon was of a mild and peaceable disposition: he had a great deal of wit, much reading, and vast know ledge. He lived among a sort of people who appeared to him passionate, and too forward to mix human methods, and the authority of the secular power, with the affairs of the church. The testimonies of piety with which Me lancthon ended his days were admirable: and it is observable, that one thing which made him look upon death as a happiness, was, that it delivered him from theological persecutions. Some days before he died, he wrote on a piece of paper, in two columns, the reasons why he ought not to be sorry for leaving this world. Melancthon said, he had held his professor's place forty years, without ever being sure that he should not lose it before the end of the week. None liked his mildness, which exposed him to all sorts of slander, and deprived him of the means of answering a fool according to his folly. The only advantage it procured him was to look upon death without fear, by considering that it would se cure him from theological hatred and contentions. VOL. III-No 66. 3 A Hoornbeeck Hoornbeeck attributed to Melancthon the Greek version of the Augsburg Confession, which appeared under the name of Paul Dolscius: and Placcius also believed that the translation of Ecclesiasticus and the Psalms into Greek verse was the work of Melancthon. It is certain, that he assisted Luther in translating the New Testament into the German language: but Melchior Adam, Teissier, and Crenius, were mistaken, as well as Placcius, about his Greek version of Ecclesiasticus, and the Psalms; for Lyserus has proved that it was done by Dolscius. Melanethon, in 1559, wrote in Greek to the patriarch of Constantinople, and said, "I send you the Greek version of the confession, which was published without my advice: however, I like the style, and have sent it to Con- stantinople." Melchior Adam says, that this version was made by Melancthon, though it was published under the name of Dolscius, who was rector of the college of Hall in Saxony. But Melancthon's own words shew that he did not make this version. Melancthon spent all his life in study, and seemed not to be capable of any other labour. He subsisted upon the salary he received from John Frederic, elector of Saxony, as professor of divinity in the university of Wittenberg; which was just sufficient to maintain his family. His constitution was very weak, and required great tenderness and management; which made Luther, zealous as he was, blame him for labouring too earnestly in the vineyard. In the beginning of his sickness, he said: "I desire to be dissolved, and to be with Christ." And when his intimate friend Camerarius took his last leave of him, and commended him to God, Melancthon said; "Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who sitteth at the right hand of the Father, and giveth gifts to men, preserve you and yours, and us all." Feeling himself very sick, he cried; "O Lord, make an end!" Having received letters from Francfort, concerning the persecution of some godly men in France, he said, "that his bodily disease was not comparable to the grief of his mind for his godly friends, and for the miseries of the church." Raising himself up in his bed; he cried out; "If God be for us, who can be against us?" After this he prayed to himself; and being at length asked by his son-in-law, if he would have any thing, he answered, "Nothing but heaven; therefore, trouble me по no more with speaking to me." Soon after this he gave up the ghost, at Wittenberg, April 19, 1560, which was the sixty-third day of his sixty-fourth year. He was ho nourably buried near Luther, in the church of the castle, two days after and his funeral oration was spoken by Winshemius, a doctor of physic, and professor of the Greek tongue. : It is astonishing, that, amidst so many other occupations, Melancthon could write so many books. The num ber of them is prodigious; and a chronological catalogue of them was published in 1582, by Mylius. Christopher Pezelius, professor of theology at Wittenberg, in 1578, published some extracts of Melancthon's works, in which he put the objections and answers concerning theological matters in a very good method, and interspersed some short observations. This work contains eight volumes in octavo, which have been printed several times at Neustat. Melancthon finished few pieces, and published many imperfect. He found his writings were profitable to the youth, and he rather chose to print many of them, than to perfect a small number, as he preferred the advantage of the public to his own glory. He published several books on rhetoric, logic, and grammar, as well as on theology. His common places were published in 1521, when he was only twenty-four years of age; and there is reason to believe that he was an author in print before the age of twenty. The parliament at Paris, in 1523, censured some of his works, as they did those of Luther and Carolostadius. The court condemned the writings of Melancthon, as containing "things contrary to Holy Scripture, sound reason, the councils, the doc trine of the universal church, and judgement of the catholic fathers," &c. MENDS, CHRISTOPHER, was born February 22, 1724, at Cottes, in the parish of Hascard, Pembrokeshire, South Wales. His father was a reputable clothier, who had nine children. In a paper containing some sketches of his life drawn up by himself, he says, "Glory be to God! he was pleased to work upon my heart in childhood; and in very early life I took great delight in reading and in prayer. But after a few years, the great enemy of souls, taking occasion from my ignorance, persuaded 3 A 2 me |