3. Driven from Königsberg
The peace-loving policy of Albert was still to
demonstrate its futility. The ambiguity of the Warty
temberg declaration seemed to him to
constitute a good formula of union,
and on Jan. 24, 1553, he
required that
gtfnigs- sermons on justification should beberg.
preached according to the six Warttemberg articles, and
that all coarse.
nee should be avoided. This was tantamount to a
defense of Oeiandrianism, but the great majority
of the duke's subjects were opposed, while Marlin
declared himself unable to obey the ducal mandate
when contrary to the obligations of religion. This
was the only course open to
aim, but the duke's
displeasure was now finally incurred, and on Feb.
16, 1553, he presented his resignation. Three days
later he sought refuge in Danzig, where he awaited
an expected recall, supported as he was by the
council and the citizens. But all appeals to the
duke were in vain; and the exile at last resigned
himself to his punishment and sought for a new
field of activity. Marlin had not long to wait.
Brunswick and Lübeck were rivals for his services;
the former won by right of priority, and he entered
Brunswick on July 25, 1553. In the following year
he received an assistant in the Melanchthonian
Martin Chemnitz (q.v.), and developed a powerful
activity, strengthening the Lutheran cause with
the aid of the religious peace of Augsburg (see
Augsburg, Religious Peace of),
and preparing,
in 1577, his
Leges pro miniaterio Brunavim~,
which
all the clergy of his superintendency were required
to
subscribe when entering upon office. He assailed the Reformed as bitterly as the Roman Catholics. Again, in 1564, the council of Brunswick
enacted that the
Corpus doctrints
should be subscribed by all theologians, a rule which remained
in force until 1672. 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 Marlin
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
$chwenckfeld, besides being one of those asked by
the council of Bremen to settle the dispute between
Johann Timann and
Albert Hardenberg (qq.v.).
He furthermore defended Hesshusen in
his pamphlet
Wider die Landduge» der heidelbergischen Theologen
(1565).
