Death
But before these and other theological dissensions were ended, he died; a few days before this event he committed to writing his reasons for not fearing it. On the left were the words, "Thou shalt be delivered from sins, and be freed from the acrimony and fury of theologians"; on the right, "Thou shalt go to the light, see God, look upon his Son, learn those wonderful mysteries which thou hast not been able to understand in this life." The immediate cause of death was a severe cold which he had contracted on a journey to Leipzig in March, 1560, followed by a fever that consumed his strength, weakened by many sufferings.
The only care that occupied him until his last moment was the desolate condition of the Church. He strengthened himself in almost uninterrupted prayer, and in listening to passages of Scripture. Especially significant did the words seem to him, "His own received him not; but as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God." When Caspar Peucer, his son in-law, asked him if he wanted anything, he replied, "Nothing but heaven." His body was laid beside Luther's in the Schloßkirche in Wittenberg.
He is commemorated in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod on February 16 and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on June 25 (The LCMS commemorates him on his date of birth, and the ELCA on the date of the presentation of the Augsburg Confession).
Read more about this topic: Philipp Melanchthon
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Do but consider this small dust, here running in the glass,
By atoms moved.
Could you believe that this the body was
Of one that loved?
And in his mistress’ flame playing like a fly,
Turned to cinders by her eye?
Yes, and in death as life unblest,
To have’t expressed,
Even ashes of lovers find no rest.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“What we think of as our sensitivity is only the higher evolution of terror in a poor dumb beast. We suffer for nothing. Our own death wish is our only real tragedy.”
—Mario Puzo (b. 1920)
“If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever- present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.”
—Muriel Spark (b. 1918)