 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.