Thus Major was willing to abandon as dangerous and ambiguous, and to abstain from the use of the formula, "Good works are necessary to salvation," but refused to reject it as false and to make a public admission and confession of his error. This, however, was precisely what his opponents demanded; for they were convinced that they could be satisfied with nothing less. As a result the controversy continued till Major's death, in 1574. The Jena professors, notably Flacius, have been charged with prolonging the controversy from motives of personal revenge. (Schaff, 276.) No doubt, the Wittenbergers had gone to the very limit of rousing the animosity and resentment of Flacius (who himself, indeed, was not blameless in the language used against his opponents). Major had depicted Flacius as a most base and wicked man, as a cunning and sly adventurer; as a tyrant, who, after having suppressed the Wittenbergers, would, as a pope, lord it over all Germany; as an Antinomian and a despiser of all good works, etc. (Preger 1, 397.) In the address of October 18, 1567 already referred to, Major said: "There was in this school [Wittenberg] a vagabond of uncertain origin, fatherland, religion, and faith who called himself Flacius Illyricus.... He was the first one to spew out against this school, against its principal Doctors, against the churches of these regions, against the princes themselves, the poison which he had brewed and imbibed some time ago, and, having gnawed and consumed with the bite of a serpent the womb of his mother, to destroy the harmony of these churches, at first by spreading his dreams, fables, and gossip but now also by calumnies and manifest lies." (Frank 2, 217.) Melanchthon, too, had repeatedly written in a similar vein. In an _Opinion_ of his, dated March 4, 1558, we read: "Even if they [Flacius and his adherents] condemn and banish me, I am well satisfied; for I do not desire to associate with them, because I well know that the said Illyricus with his adherents does not seek the honor of God, but publicly opposes the truth, and as yet has never declared himself concerning the entire sum of Christian doctrine." (_C. R._ 9, 463. 476. 311.) In an _Opinion_ of March 9, 1559, Melanchthon even insinuated that Flacius denied the Trinity. (763.) Before this, August, 1549, he had written to Fabricius: "The Slavic runagate (Slavus drapetes) received many benefits from our Academy and from me. But we have nursed a serpent in our bosom. He deserves to be branded on his forehead as the Macedonian king did with a soldier: 'Ungrateful stranger, xevnos acharistos.' Nor do I believe that the source of his hatred is any other than that the place of Cruciger was not given to him. But I omit these disagreeable narrations." (7, 449. 478 ff.) This personal abuse, however, was not the reason why Flacius persisted in his opposition despite the concessions made by Major and Menius,-- concessions with which even such moderate men as Martin Chemnitz were