The talented young man who had given promise of the highest achievements in the domain of humanism, and who had taken up his residence at Wittenberg with the intention of devoting his academic career more particularly to the Greek classics, soon fell under Luther’s influence. Luther not only loved and admired him, but was, all along, determined to exploit, in the interests of his new theology, the rare gifts of a friend and colleague thirteen years his junior. Melanchthon not only taught the classics, but, after a while, announced a series of lectures on the Epistle to Titus. It was due to Luther that he thus gave himself up more to divinity and eventually cultivated it side by side with humanism. “With all his might” Luther “drove him to study theology.”[1054] Melanchthon’s “_Loci communes_” or elements of theology, a scholastically conceived work on the main doctrines of Lutheranism, was one of the results of Luther’s efforts to profit by the excellent gifts of the colleague—who he was convinced had been sent him by Providence—in formulating his theology and in demolishing the olden doctrine of the Church. The “_Loci_” proved to be a work of fundamental importance for Luther’s cause.[1055] The character of the “_Loci_,” at once methodic and positive, indicated the lines on which Melanchthon as a theologian was afterwards to proceed. He invented nothing, his aim being rather to clothe Luther’s ideas in clear, comprehensive and scholastic language—so far as this could be done. His carefully chosen wording, together with his natural dislike for exaggeration or unnecessary harshness of expression, helped him in many instances so to tone down what was offensive in Luther’s doctrines and opinions as to render them, in their humanistic dress, quite acceptable to many scholars. As a matter of fact, however, all his polish and graceful rhetoric often merely served to conceal the lack of ideas, or the contradictions. The great name he had won for himself in the field of humanism by his numerous publications, which vied with those of Reuchlin and Erasmus—his friends called him “_praeceptor Germaniae_”—went to enhance the importance of his theological works amongst those who either sided with Luther or were wavering. _Earlier Relations of Luther with Melanchthon._