Joachim Mörlin

Joachim Mörlin (5 April 1514, in Wittenberg, Electorate of Saxony – 29 May 1571, in Königsberg, Duchy of Prussia (now Kaliningrad in Russia) - 1945) was an Evangelical Lutheran theologian and an important figure in the controversies following Martin Luther's (1483-1546) death.

On 22 September 1540 Joachim left Wittenberg to become superintendent at Arnstadt, where, until deposed in March 1543 for his rigid discipline and opposition to union, he displayed great activity, moral earnestness, and courage.

Here he was equally firm in insistence on purity of life and doctrine, and wrote his Enchiridion catecheticum (1544), taught rhetoric in the Latin school, and lectured on Erasmus and the Loci of Melanchthon.

24, 1550), Mörlin remained a silent witness; but Osiander's work with on the incarnation and the image of God, and still more his Bericht und Trostschrift, with its savage attack on Melanchthon, led Mörlin to complain, on 7 February 1551, to Albert of Prussia, though he did this so delicately that the duke commissioned him and Aurifaber, Osiander's son-in-law, to assemble the theologians for the conference which was held on 13–17 February.

This was tantamount to a defense of Osiandrianism, but the great majority of the duke's subjects were opposed, while Mörlin declared himself unable to obey the ducal mandate when contrary to the obligations of religion.

In the following year he received an assistant in the Melanchthonian Martin Chemnitz, and developed a powerful activity, strengthening the Lutheran cause with the aid of the religious peace of Augsburg, and preparing, in 1577, his Leges pro ministerio Brunsvicensi, which all the clergy of his superintendency were required to subscribe when entering upon office.

And this was no dead letter, for in 1566 Johannes Becker, a pastor in Brunswick who had subscribed to the Corpus but become a Calvinist, was forced to resign and ultimately was banished from the city.

Meanwhile, Mörlin and Chemnitz were active in other inter-Lutheran controversies and in warding off Calvinistic attacks; and the former was the prime mover in the rejection, by the Brunswick clergy, of the doctrines of Schwenckfeld, besides being one of those asked by the council of Bremen to settle the dispute between Johann Timann and Albert Hardenberg.

In the struggle with Calvinism Mörlin supported Joachim Westphal, and to this end wrote his Confessio fidei de eucharistiae sacramento ministrorum ecclesiarum Saxonicarum (Magdeburg, 1557).

At Coswik he sought to mediate between Melanchthon and Flacius, and in his eagerness for peace, when the delegates of the Hanseatic League assembled at Brunswick, he held a conference with Chemnitz, Westphal, and others (on 14 January 1557) and reached an agreement on articles tending to reconcile the adiaphorists and those holding to the true Gospel.

Mörlin was also a prominent figure at the conference of theologians from Lower Saxony held at Lüneburg in July 1561, and wrote the confession of faith there drawn up, Erklärung aus Gottes Wort und kurzer Bericht der Artikel, etc.

(Magdeburg, Jena, and Regensburg, 1561), which became binding on all pastors in Brunswick; and he again showed his Wittenberg orthodoxy in his Verantwortung der Präfation so für die lüneburgischen Artikel (1562).

In 1563 the Council of Wesel asked the opinion of the Brunswick theologians for a ruling on the admission of Reformed refugees from England, and the decision was that the immigrants should be received and instructed; but, should they propagate their erroneous views, they should be expelled.

In 1566 and 1567 Mörlin found himself compelled to break with his old friend Flacius because of the latter's teaching on original sin; and at the same time he wrote against the Antinomians his Tres disputationes de tertio usu legis.

Well informed of all that went on in Königsberg, Mörlin strengthened his sympathisers with his Historia welcher Gestalt sich die osiandrische Schwärmerei im Lande zu Preussen erhoben (Brunswick, 1554).