A similar lack of any just and clear appreciation of the great truths of the faith is also apparent in Melanchthon’s letters to Erasmus, more particularly in the later ones. Here personal friendship and Humanist fellow-feeling vie with each other in explaining away in the most startling manner the religious differences.[1011] Many elements of theology were dissolved by Melanchthon’s subjective method of exegesis and by the system of philosophy he had built up from the classical authors, particularly from Cicero. Melanchthon’s philosophy was quite unfitted to throw light on the doctrines of revelation. To him the two domains, of philosophy and theology, seemed, not only independent, but actually hostile to each other, a state of things absolutely unknown to the Middle Ages. If, as Melanchthon avers, reason is unable to prove the existence of God on philosophical grounds, then, by this very fact, the science of the supernatural loses every stay, nor is it possible any longer to defend revelation against unbelief. It is the merest makeshift, when, like other of his Humanist contemporaries, Melanchthon seeks to base our knowledge of God’s existence on feeling and on a vague inward experience.[1012] Thus we can quite understand how old-fashioned Protestantism, after having paid but little attention to Melanchthon either in the days of orthodox Lutheranism or of Pietism, began to have recourse to him with the advent of Rationalism. The orthodox had missed in him Luther’s sparkling “strength of faith” and the courageous resolve to twit the “devil” within and without; the Pietists failed to discern in him the mysticism they extolled in Luther. Rationalists, on the other hand, found in him many kindred elements. Even of quite recent years Melanchthon has been hailed as the type of the easy-going theologian who seeks to bridge the chasm between believing and infidel Protestantism; at any rate, Melanchthon’s positive belief was far more extensive than that of many of his would-be imitators. _Melanchthon Legends_ The tale once current that, at the last, Melanchthon was a Lutheran only in name, is to-day rejected by all scholars, Protestant and Catholic. Concerning the “honesty of his Protestantism” “no doubts” are raised by Protestant theologians, who call his teaching a “modification and a toning down” of that of Luther; nor can we conclude that “he was at all shaky in his convictions,” even should the remarkable utterance about to be cited really emanate from him.[1013] A Catholic historian of the highest standing agrees in saying of him: “Even though Luther’s teaching may not have completely satisfied Melanchthon, yet there is no reason to doubt, that, on the whole, he was heart and soul on the side of the innovations.... We may now and then come upon actions on his part which arouse a suspicion as to his straightforwardness, but on the whole his convictions cannot be questioned.”[1014]