Therefore our Savior saith, "my yoke is easy, and my burden is light,"
because He helpeth to bear them; else indeed we should not be able to
bear them. And in another place He saith, "His commandments are not
heavy"; they are heavy to our flesh, but being qualified with the Spirit
of God, to the faithful which believe in Christ, to them, I say, they
are not heavy; for tho their doings are not perfect, yet they are well
taken for Christ's sake.

You must not be offended because the Scripture commends love so highly,
for he that commends the daughter commends the mother; for love is the
daughter, and faith is the mother: love floweth out of faith; where
faith is, there is love; but yet we must consider their offices, faith
is the hand wherewith we take hold on everlasting life.

Now let us enter into ourselves, and examine our own hearts, whether we
are in the livery of God, or not: and when we find ourselves to be out
of this livery, let us repent and amend our lives, so that we may come
again to the favor of God, and spend our time in this world to His honor
and glory, forgiving our neighbors all such things as they have done
against us.

And now to make an end: mark here who gave this precept of love--Christ
our Savior Himself. When and at what time? At His departing, when He
should suffer death. Therefore these words ought the more to be
regarded, seeing He Himself spake them at His last departing from us.
May God of His mercy give us grace so to walk here in this world,
charitably and friendly one with another, that we may attain the joy
which God hath prepared for all those that love Him. Amen.

MELANCHTHON

THE SAFETY OF THE VIRTUOUS

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Philip Melanchthon (Schwarzerd) was born at Bretten, in Baden, in 1497.
His name is noteworthy as first a fellow laborer and eventually a
controversial antagonist of Luther. At the Diet of Augsburg, in 1530, he
was the leading representative of the Reformation. He formulated the
twenty-eight articles of the evangelical faith known as the "Augsburg
Confession." The Lutherans of extreme Calvinistic views were alienated
by Melanchthon's subsequent modifications of this confession, and by his
treatises in ethics. He and his followers were bitterly assailed, but
his irenic spirit did not forsake him. He was a true child of the
Renaissance, and is styled by some writers "the founder of general
learning throughout Europe." While he was never called or o