Melanchthon, albeit with great moderation and reserve, never quitted the reformer’s standpoint as regards either theory or practice. Many Catholic contemporaries were even of opinion that he did more harm to the Church by his prudence and apparent moderation than Luther by all his storming. His soft-spoken manner and advocacy of peace did not, however, hinder him from voicing with the utmost bitterness his hatred of everything Catholic, and his white-hot prejudice in favour of the innovations. He wrote, for instance, at the end of 1525 in an official memorandum (“_de iure reformandi_”) intended for the evangelical Princes and Estates that, even should “war and scandal” ensue, still they must not desist from the introduction and maintenance of the new religious system, for our cause “touches the honour of Christ,” and the doctrine of Justification by Faith alone in particular, so he says, “will not suffer the contrary.” Why heed the complaints of the Catholics and the Empire? Christ witnessed “the destruction of the Kingdom of the Jews” and yet proceeded with His work. According to this memorandum there was no need of waiting for the Pope’s permission to “reform” things; the people are everywhere “bound to accept the doctrine [of Luther]” while evangelical Princes and authorities are “not bound to obey the edicts [of the Empire]; hence, in fairness, they cannot be scolded as schismatics.”[1063] For such a ruthless invitation to overturn the old-established order Melanchthon sought to reassure himself and others by alleging the “horrible abuses” of Popery which it had become necessary to remove; the war was to be only against superstition and idolatry, the tyranny of the ecclesiastical system challenging resistance.[1064] Then and ever afterwards the Pope appeared to him in the light of Antichrist, with whom no reconciliation was possible unless indeed he yielded to Luther. In the same year in which he wrote the above his correspondence begins to betray the anxiety and apprehension which afterwards never ceased to torture him, due partly to what he witnessed of the results of the innovations, partly to his own natural timidity. The Peasant War of 1525 plunged him into dismay. There he saw to what lengths the abuse of evangelical freedom could lead, once the passions of the people were let loose. At the express wish of the Elector Ludwig of the Palatinate he wrote in vigorous and implacable language a refutation of the Peasant Articles; the pen of the scholar was, however, powerless to stay the movement which was carrying away the people. A work of much greater importance fell to him when he was invited to take part in the Visitation of the churches in the Saxon Electorate, then in a state of utter chaos; it was then that he wrote, in 1527, the Visitation-booklet for the use of the ecclesiastical inspectors.