In the matter of Justification, he, like Luther, made everything to rest on that entirely outward covering over of man by Christ’s merits received through faith, or rather through confidence of salvation.[1144] Indeed, Luther’s greatest service, according to him, lay in his having made this discovery. It was necessary, so he taught, that Christian perfection should be made to consist solely in one’s readiness, whenever oppressed by the sense of guilt, to find consolation by wrapping oneself up in the righteousness of Christ. Then the heart is “fearless, though our conscience and the law continue to cry within us that we are unworthy.” In other words, we must “take it as certain that we have a God Who is gracious to us for Christ’s sake, be our works what they may.”[1145] It was his advocacy of this doctrine, as the very foundation of sanctification, which earned for him the striking commendation we find in a letter written by Luther to Jonas in 1529. Melanchthon had been of greater service to the Church and the cause of holiness than “a thousand fellows of the ilk of Jerome, Hilarion or Macarius, those Saints of ceremonies and celibacy who were not worthy to loose the laces of his boots nor—to boast a little—of yours [Jonas’s], of Pomeranus [Bugenhagen], or even of mine. For what have these self-constituted Saints and all the wifeless bishops done which can compare with one year’s work of Philip’s, or with his ‘_Loci_’?”[1146] Yet this very work was to bear additional testimony to Melanchthon’s abandonment of several of Luther’s fundamental doctrines.[1147] In 1530 and 1531 Melanchthon passed through a crisis, and from that time forward a greater divergency in matters of doctrine became apparent between the two friends. Even in his work for the Diet in 1530 Melanchthon had assumed a position of greater independence, and this grew more marked when he began to plan a revised edition of his “_Loci_.” He himself was later to acknowledge that his views had undergone a change, though, in order to avoid unpleasantness, he preferred to make out that the alteration was less far-reaching than it really was. “You know,” he wrote to an ardent admirer of Luther’s, “that I put certain things concerning predestination, determination of the will, necessity of obedience to the law, and grievous sin, less harshly than does Luther. In all these things, as I well know, Luther’s teaching is the same as mine, but there are some unlearned persons, who, without at all understanding them, pin their faith on certain rude expressions of his.”[1148] But was Luther’s teaching really “the same”? The truth is, that, on the points instanced, “Luther had not only in earlier days taught a doctrine different from that of Melanchthon, but continued to cherish the same to the very end of his life.”[1149] It fitted, however, the cowardly character of Melanchthon to conceal as much as possible these divergencies.