The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

There he received his first deep impressions of Luther, whom he often
heard in the pulpit, in, the fullest glory of his power. When, nine years later,
Chemnitz came to Wittenberg as a University student, Luther was living,
but the young scholar had not yet decided on the theological studies with
which his renown was to be identified. To these Melanchthon drew him.
The learning of Chemnitz was something colossal, but it had no tinge of
pedantry. His judgment was of the highest order. His modesty and
simplicity, his clearness of thought, and his luminous style, his firmness in
principle, and his gentleness in tone, the richness of his learning and the
vigor of his thinking, have revealed themselves in such measure in his
Loci, his Books on the Two Natures of our Lord, and on the True
Presence, in his Examen of the Council of Trent, his Defence of the
Formula of Concord, and his Harmony of the Gospels, as to render each a
classic in its kind, and to mark their author as the greatest theologian of his
time - one of the greatest theologians of all time.
4. The third man in the great theological "triumvirate," as its enemies
were pleased to call it, was NICHOLAS SELNECCER (1530-1592). He
too was one of Melanchthon's pupils (1549). In 1557 he became Court
preacher at Dresden. He was a great favorite with the Elector Augustus.
His simple, earnest Lutheranism led him to defend Hoffman against the
persecutions of the Melanchthonian-Calvinistic party. So little did
Augustus at that time understand the real character of the furtive error
against which, in after time, he was to direct the most terrible blows, that
Selneccer was allowed to resign his place, (1561). The exile sought refuge
in Jena. There the Flaccian troubles met him, and led to his deposition, but
Augustus recalled him (1568) to a position as Professor at Leipzig, in
which he labored on, in stillness, not unobservant, however, of the
mischiefs connected with the Crypto-Calvinistic movements in Saxony.
Finally the Elector, with his aid, had his eyes opened to these evils, and the
movements began which terminated in the Formula of Concord. In all
these movements, Selneccer was very active and useful. To him we owe
the Latin translation of the Formula. Like all who bore part