The wrong idea which he came more and more to cherish amounted to this: The true doctrine of the Catholic Church of Christ, as against the _Roman_ Catholic Church of the day, is that to be found “in the Epistles of the Apostles and in the recognised ecclesiastical writers.”[1225] Without succeeding in finding any position of real safety, he insists on the necessity of sharing the “consensus of the Catholic Church of Christ” and of belonging to the true, ancient and “sublime ‘_cœtus ecclesiæ_’ over which rules the Son of God.”[1226] Hence comes what we find in the Wittenberg certificates of Ordination which he drew up, in which the “_doctrina catholicæ ecclesiæ_,” taken, of course, in the above uncertain and wholly subjective sense, is declared to have been accepted by the “_ordinandi_” and to be the best testimony to their office. In this conception of the Church “we find the explanation of the great struggle which it cost him, when, after 1530, he had to face the fact that the schism was real and definitive.... In his conception, the true faith was thus no longer the new Lutheran understanding of the Gospel, but rather the ancient creeds.”[1227] Cordatus was not so far wrong when he declared, referring to Melanchthon, that at Wittenberg there were men “learned in languages who would rather read and listen to a dead Erasmus than a living Luther.”[1228] Erasmus himself saw in Melanchthon’s exposition of Romans and in the dedication of the same which the author privately sent him on October 25, 1532, a “clear corroboration of the suspicion that he had come to dislike his own party” (“_se suorum pigere_”).[1229] In the aforesaid dedication Melanchthon had complained, as he often did, of the religious “controversies and quarrels” which were quite repugnant to him: “As neither side cares for moderation, both have refused to listen to us.” These and such-like admissions “caused Erasmus to think that he was desirous of forsaking the evangelical camp.”[1230] In the very year of Erasmus’s death he wrote to him: “I cordially agree with you on most of the questions under discussion.”[1231] The fondness of the Wittenbergers for the crude and paradoxical, so he adds, discreetly veiling his meaning in Greek, failed entirely to appeal to him; he was anxious to find “better-sounding” formulæ in which to embody doctrine, but here he was faced by “danger.” He bad reached an age when lie had learnt to treat questions of faith more gingerly than of yore.[1232] “Thus, in the presence of Erasmus, he here repudiates the Melanchthon of the early years of the Reformation.”[1233] At Wittenberg there was then a rumour that Melanchthon intended to migrate elsewhere, because he no longer agreed with Luther and his set.[1234] That such was actually his intention has since been confirmed.