Philip Melanchthon
Philip Melanchthon (born Philipp Schwartzerdt; 16 February 1497 – 19 April 1560) was a German Lutheran reformer, collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation, intellectual leader of the Lutheran Reformation, and an influential designer of educational systems. He stands next to Luther and John Calvin as a reformer, theologian, and molder of Protestantism. After Luther himself, he is the primary founder of Lutheranism.
Crypto-Calvinism
When Luther died in 1546, his closest friend and ally, Philipp Melanchthon, became the leading Lutheran theologian of the Protestant Reformation. He was by training not a theologian but rather a classics scholar, and his theological approach became more or less irenic both toward Catholicism and toward Calvinism, which was followed by his disciples called Philippists. Towards Reformed doctrine of eucharist this had become evident already in 1540, when Melanchthon had published another version of the Augsburg Confession ("Variata"), in which the article on the Real Presence differed essentially from what had been expressed in 1530. The wording was as follows:The altered edition was made the basis of negotiations with the Roman Catholics at the Colloquies of Worms and Ratisbon in 1541, and at the later Colloquies in 1546 and 1557. It was printed (with the title and preface of the Invariata) in Corpus Doctrinae Philippicum in 1559; it was expressly approved by the Lutheran princes at the Convention of Naumburg in 1561,
after Melanchthon’s death, as an improved modification and authentic interpretation of the Confession, and was adhered to by the Melanchthonians and the Reformed even after the adoption of the Book of Concord (1580). Also John Calvin signed it. Still it had no legal status given by Peace of Augsburg, which belonged to original version.