ODIUM THEOLOGICUM.

Some days before Melancthon died, he wrote upon a piece of paper in two columns the reasons

why he ought not to be sorry for leaving this world. One of those columns contained the advantages which death procured him; the other contained the evils from which death delivered him. He put only two articles into the latter;—1. That he should sin no more. 2. That he should be no longer exposed to the vexations and rage of the divines. That nature which gave Melanchthon a peaceable temper, made him a present ill suited with the juncture of time in which he was to live. His moderation served only to vex him. He was like a sheep in the midst of wolves; no person liked his mildness, which exposed him to all sorts of reproaches, 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 secure him from the odium theologicum, and from the infidos agitans discordia fratres. I shall speak hereafter of the slavery wherein he lived. He said in one of his works, that he held his professor’s place forty years, without ever having any assurance that he should not be driven from it before the end of the week. “Ego jam sum hie, dei beneficio, quadraginta annos: & nunquam potui dicere aut certus esse me per unam septimanam mansuram esse.”

Art. Melancthon.