However, while Majorism as well as synergism, as stated, represented essentially the same error and argued against the doctrine of grace in the same unscriptural manner, the more subtle, veiled, and hence the more dangerous of the two, no doubt, was synergism, which reduced man's cooperation to a seemingly harmless minimum and, especially in the beginning, endeavored to clothe itself in ambiguous phrases and apparently pious and plausible formulas. Perhaps this accounts also for the fact that, though Melanchthon and the Majorists felt constrained to abandon as described in the preceding chapter, the coarser and more offensive Majoristic propositions, they had at the same time no compunctions about retaining and defending essentially the same error in their doctrine of conversion; and that, on the other hand, their opponents, who by that time fully realized also the viciousness of synergism, were not satisfied with Major's concessions in the controversy on good works, because he and his colleagues in Wittenberg were known to identify themselves with the Synergists. For the same reason the dangerous error lurking in the synergistic phrases does not seem from the first to have been recognized by the Lutherans in the same degree as was the error contained in the Majoristic propositions, which indeed had even during Luther's life to some extent become a subject of dispute. Yet it seems hardly possible that for years they should not have detected the synergistic deviations in Wittenberg from Luther's doctrine of free will. Perhaps the fact that at the time when Melanchthon came out boldly with his synergism, 1548, the Lutherans were engrossed with the Adiaphoristic and Majoristic controversies may help to explain, at least to some extent, why the synergistic error caused small concern, and was given but little consideration in the beginning. As a matter of fact, although a considerable amount of synergistic material had been published by 1548, the controversy did not begin till 1556, while the error that good works are necessary to salvation was publicly opposed soon after its reappearance in the Leipzig Interim. At the Weimar Disputation, 1560, Strigel referred to this silence, saying: "I am astonished that I am pressed so much in this matter [concerning synergism], since three years ago at Worms no mention whatever [?] was made of this controversy, while many severe commands were given regarding others." (Richard, _Conf. Prin.,_ 349.) The matter was mentioned at Worms, but Melanchthon is reported to have satisfied Brenz and others by declaring that in the passages of his _Loci_ suspected of synergism he meant "the regenerated will." 152. Luther's Monergism.