The Commissions of Visitation labored in this mild, conciliatory, and truly scriptural spirit, and that, too, with blessed results. The Catholics pretended to find a creeping back, as Luther calls it, in this book of instruction, and began to rejoice aloud.[12] When the little volume appeared publicly in 1528, and also during the previous years when a Latin sketch of it had been printed, different opinions were expressed concerning it. But the most singular attack upon the book was made by one of the evangelical party. A former friend of Melanchthon, JOHN AGRICOLA, rector in Eisleben, considered it unscriptural, and leading to the papacy, if repentance was derived from the law, and not from the gospel. This dispute made so much noise, that the Elector considered himself obliged to arrange a meeting in Torgau, between Agricola, on the one side, and Melanchthon, Luther, and Bugenhagen, on the other. It was held in November, 1527. Agricola could easily be refuted from the Scriptures; however, he was a man obstinately wedded to his own opinion, who, as it is well known, stirred up this very matter ten years after, in the most violent manner, at which time he made use of the most daring expressions, such as "Moses deserves the gallows." But this Antinomian spirit, which was manifested by the ultra-evangelical party from time to time, was refuted by Luther in the most powerful and conclusive manner. Melanchthon refers to this, and refutes it in a number of writings. In the summer of 1527, the university was removed to Jena, because the plague had broken out in Wittenberg. When Melanchthon had finished his first visitation tour, he continued to lecture in Jena, and wrote against the Anabaptists, who were also carrying on their sectarianism in various parts of Saxony. In the autumn of 1528, he made his second visitation tour into Thuringia, together with Myconius and Menius. CHAPTER IX. THE DIET OF SPIRE.