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.
Philippists
Philippists was the designation usually applied in the latter half of the sixteenth century to the followers of Philipp Melanchthon. It probably originated among the opposite or Flacian party, and was applied at first to the theologians of the universities of Wittenberg and Leipzig, who were all adherents of Melanchthon's distinctive views, especially those in which he approximated to Roman Catholic doctrine on the subject of free will and the value of good works, and to the Swiss Reformers' on the Lord's Supper. Somewhat later it was used in Saxony to designate a distinct party organized by Melanchthon's son-in-law Caspar Peucer, with George Cracovius, Johann Stössel, and others, to work for a union of all the Protestant forces, as a means to which end they attempted to break down by this attitude the barriers which separated Lutherans and Calvinists. Melanchthon had won, by his eminent abilities as a teacher and his clear, scholastic formulation of doctrine, a large number of disciples among whom were included some of the most zealous Lutherans, such as Matthias Flacius and Tilemann Heshusius, afterward to be numbered among the vehement opponents of Philippism; both of whom formally and materially received the forms of doctrine shaped by Melanchthon. As long as Luther lived, the conflict with external foes and the work of building up the Evangelical Church so absorbed the Reformers that the internal differences which had already begun to show themselves were kept in the background.