Yet Melanchthon’s own inclination was more and more in the direction of leaving ecclesiastical affairs to the secular authorities. In his practice he abandoned the idea of an invisible Church even more completely than did Luther. The rigid doctrinal system for which he came to stand in the interests of the pure preaching of the faith, the duty which he assigned to the State of seeing that the proclamation of the Gospel conformed to the standard of the Augsburg Confession, and finally the countenance he gave to the persecution of sectarians by the State, and to State regulation of the Church, all this showed that he was anxious to make of the Church a mere department of the State.[1245] The Princes, as principal members of the Church, must, according to him, see “that errors are removed and consciences comforted”; above all they were of course to assist in “checking the encroachments of the Popes.”[1246] “To us at the present day it appears strange—though at the time of the Reformation this was not felt at all—that Melanchthon, in the Article of the Augsburg Confession concerning priestly marriage, should have [in the ‘_Variata_’] made the appeal to the Emperor so comprehensive that the ecclesiastical privileges of the Princes practically became an article of faith.”[1247] It also displeased him greatly that Luther in his writings should so frequently employ vile and abusive epithets when speaking of great persons. He was loath to see the Catholic Princes thus vilified, particularly when, as in the case of Albert, Elector of Mayence, he had hopes of their assistance. On June 16, 1538, Luther read aloud from the pulpit, and afterwards published in print, a statement of “frightful violence” against this Prince, moved thereto, as it would appear, by the respectful manner in which the Archbishop had been treated by Melanchthon.[1248] The latter made no secret of his entire disapproval, and it is to be hoped that others at Wittenberg shared his opinion of this document in which Luther speaks of the German Prince as a false and perjured man, town-clerk and merd-bishop of Halle.[1249]