Dilucida explicatio sanae doctrinae de vera participatione carnis & sanguinis Christi in sacra coena, ad discutiendas Heshusii nebulas

DE VERA PARTICIP.

O Philippe Melanchthon a leading Lutheran reformer! I call upon you, because you live with Christ before God, and you await us there until we are gathered with you into blessed rest. You said a hundred times, when you were weary from your labors and oppressed by troubles, as you familiarly rested your head upon my chest, "I wish, I wish that I might die in this embrace." I, for my part, have since wished a thousand times that it might happen for us to be together. Certainly, you would have been more spirited to undertake the struggles, and stronger to regard envy and false accusations as nothing. In this way, also, the wickedness of many would have been restrained, whose audacity to insult grew from what they called your softness. And the barkings of Staphylus were indeed gravely refuted by you. Regarding Gallus, about whom you complained privately to me—of which matter the letters written by your hand are witnesses—you neglected to curb his insolence and that of those like him. Nor have I forgotten what you once wrote to me. I shall transcribe the very words: "I know that, by your excellent prudence, you judge from the writings of your adversaries what their natures are, and what theater they are looking at." But I remember what I replied to these things: and I shall also transcribe the words of my own letter: "You advise rightly and prudently that our antagonists propose to themselves only this: to sell themselves to the theater. But although their opinion will far frustrate them, as I hope and as is credible, nevertheless, that they may gain the applause of the whole world, it is fitting for us to be intent with greater zeal upon the heavenly ἀγωνοθετήν judge of the contest, under whose eyes we struggle." What? Will the dense host of angels, who both stir us up with their favor and show the way to act strenuously by their own example, allow one to grow sluggish or move feet hesitantly? What of the whole chorus of the holy Fathers? Will it add no spurs? What

furthermore of the Church of God, the utility of which, let us know, we must look to above all else? As for my own spirit, I do not doubt that these things will be in my hands, and I do not doubt that I ought to acknowledge what I owe to the Church. Nor do I think that in this matter, either I or you should be exonerated. Rather, if anything remains in me, I am prepared, according to my duty and the burden placed upon my shoulders, to admonish and exhort all those who are with you, and in you, and through you. I have decided to respond to all labor. Nor in this matter, either I or you.
This indeed