Characteristic of Melanchthon, though hitherto little noticed, were the severity and obstinacy with which he sought to carry his intolerance into practice. He relentlessly called in the assistance of the secular authorities against the canons of Cologne who had remained faithful to the religion of their fathers.[1195] As to his opponents within his own fold he demanded that the rulers should punish them, particularly the Anabaptists, not merely as sedition-mongers and rebels, but on account of their doctrinal peculiarities. Their rejection of infant baptism he regarded as one of those blasphemies which ought to be punished by death; the denial of original sin and the theory that the Sacraments were merely signs he looked upon as similar blasphemies. At least those Anabaptists, “who are the heads and leaders,” and who refuse to abjure their errors, “should be put to death by the sword as seditious men and blasphemers.” “Others, who have been led astray, and who, though not so defiant, refuse to recant, should be treated as madmen and sent to jail.”[1196] Of these principles concerning the coercion of both Catholics and sectarians we have an enduring memorial in Melanchthon’s work dated 1539, and entitled “On the office of Princes.”[1197] Nor did he fail to incite the Lutheran authorities to adopt, in the interests of public worship, coercive measures against negligent Protestants: “I should be pleased were the authorities to make a stringent rule of driving the people to church, particularly on holidays.”[1198] His fondness for the use of coercion in furthering his own religious views is apparent throughout his career, and how congenial it was to him is clear from the fact that he manifested this leaning at the very outset of the reforms at Wittenberg, even before Luther had seen his way to do the same. As early as October 20, 1521, subsequent to the changes in public worship which had been effected by the apostate Augustinians supported by some Wittenberg professors such as Carlstadt, Amsdorf, and Jonas, Melanchthon in a written admonition told the Elector, that, as a Christian Prince, he should “make haste to abrogate the abuse of the Mass” in his country and principality, unmindful of the calumnies to which this might give rise, “in order that your Electoral Highness may not, like Capharnaum, be reproached by Christ on the Last Day on account of the great grace and mercy which, without any work of ours, has been shown in your Electoral Highness’s lands, the Holy Evangel being revealed, manifested, and brought to light, and yet all to no purpose”; God would require at his hands an account for the great grace of Luther’s mission.[1199] In this admonition, brimful of the most bitter prejudice, we find for the first time the principle laid down, that the “salvation of his soul required of a Christian Prince” the prohibition of the olden Catholic worship.