As years passed by, Melanchthon allowed himself to deviate more and more from Luther’s teaching. The latter’s way of carrying every theological thesis to its furthest limit, affrighted him. He yearned for greater freedom of action, was desirous of granting a reasonable amount of room to doubt, and was not averse to learning a thing or two even from opponents. It was his Humanistic training which taught him to put on the brake and even to introduce several far-reaching amendments into Luther’s theories. It was his Humanism which made him value the human powers and the perfectibility of the soul, and thus to doubt whether Luther was really in the right in his denial of freedom. Such a doubt we find faintly expressed by him soon after he had perused the “_Diatribe_” published by Erasmus in 1524.[1139] Luther’s reply (“_De servo arbitrio_”), to which Melanchthon officially accorded his praise, failed to convince him of man’s lack of freedom in the natural order. In 1526, in his lectures on Colossians (printed in 1528), he openly rejected the view that God was the author of sin, stood up for freedom in all matters of civil justice, and declared that in such things it was quite possible to avoid gross sin.[1140] In his new edition of the “_Loci_” in 1527 he abandoned determinism and the denial of free-will, and likewise the severer form of the doctrine of predestination,[1141] such as he had still championed in the 1525 edition, but which, he had now come to see, was at variance with the proper estimate of man and human action. Neither could Melanchthon ever bring himself to speak of human reason, as compared to faith, in quite the same language of disrespect as Luther. That, on the occasion of the Visitation, he began to lay stress on works as well as faith, has already been pointed out.[1142] In this connection it is curious to note how, with his usual caution and prudence where Luther and his more ardent followers were concerned, he recommends that works should be represented as praiseworthy only when penance was being preached, but not, for instance, when Justification was the subject, as, here, Lutherans, being accustomed to hear so much of the “_sola fides_,” might well take offence.[1143]