Although it was no easy task for Luther, whose irritability increased with advancing years, to conceal his annoyance with his friend for presuming to differ from him, yet, as we know, he never allowed matters to come to an open breach. Melanchthon, too, owing to his fears and pusillanimity, avoided any definite personal explanation. Both alike were apprehensive of the scandal of an open rupture and its pernicious effects on the common cause. Moreover, Luther was thoroughly convinced that Melanchthon’s services were indispensable to him, particularly in view of the gloomy outlook for the future. The matter, however, deserves further examination in view of the straightforwardness, clearness and inexorableness which Luther is usually supposed to have displayed in his doctrines. When important interests connected with his position seemed to call for it, Luther could be surprisingly lenient in questions of doctrine. Thus, for instance, we can hardly recognise the once so rigid Luther in the Concord signed with the Zwinglians, and again, when, for a while, the English seemed to be dallying with Lutheranism. In the case of the Zwinglian townships of South Germany, which were received into the Union by the Wittenberg Concord the better to strengthen the position of Lutheranism against the Emperor, Luther finally, albeit grudgingly, gave his assent to theological articles which differed so widely from his own doctrines that the utmost skill was required to conceal the discrepancy.[976] As for the English, Kolde says: “How far Luther was prepared to go [in allowing matters to take their course] we see, e.g. from the fact that, in his letter of March 28, 1536, to the Elector, he describes the draft Articles of agreement with the English—only recently made public and which (apart from Art. 10, which might at a pinch be taken in the Roman sense) are altogether on the lines of the ‘_Variata_’—as quite in harmony with our own teaching.”[977] The terms of this agreement were drawn up by Melanchthon. As a matter of fact “we find little trace of Luther’s spirit in the Articles. We have simply to compare [Luther’s] Schmalkalden Articles of the following year to be convinced how greatly Luther’s own mode of thought and expression differed from those Articles.” “They show us what concessions the Wittenberg theologians, as a body, were disposed to make in order to win over such a country as England.”[978]