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“Since the time of the Apostles no doctor or scribe, no theologian or jurist has confirmed, instructed and comforted the consciences of the secular Estates so well and lucidly as I have done.”[862]

“Even had I, Dr. Martin, taught or done no other good, save to enlighten and instruct the secular government and authorities, yet for this cause alone they ought to be thankful to and well-disposed towards me, for they all of them, even my worst enemies, know that in Popery such understanding of the secular power was not merely discountenanced, but actually trampled under foot by the stinking, lousy priests, monks and mendicant friars.”[863]

“In Popery,” as hundreds of documents attest, the people were taught, as they always had been, that the secular government was divinely appointed and altogether independent in its own sphere;[864] that it was nevertheless to govern according to the dictates of law and justice; that, far from neglecting it, it was to promote the eternal welfare of the subject; finally, that it was bound to recognise the Catholic Church as the supreme guardian, of both the natural and religious law. Government and secular Estate could work in all freedom and prosperity. All that Luther taught rightly concerning the secular power had been proclaimed long before by the voice of the Church and put into practice.[865] As to the new and peculiar doctrines he taught in the first period of his career, they must now be examined.

A curious changeableness and want of logic are apparent, not merely in his way of expressing himself, but also in his views. This was due in part to the fact that his mental abilities lent themselves less to the statement and defence of general theories than to controversy on individual points, but still more to the influence on his doctrine exercised by the changes proceeding in the outer world.

The main point with him in the matter of the secular authorities was, whether they might demand obedience from him and his followers in matters concerning the new doctrine, i.e. whether they might compel them to forsake the innovations, or whether the Lutheran party had the right to resist the authorities and the Emperor, even by the use of force. Another question was whether Catholics could be left free to practise their religion in localities where the authorities were on Luther’s side. Were the authorities bound to respect Catholic convictions, or had the Lutheran Prince or magistrate the right to force the refractory to accept the innovations? Finally, Luther’s relations with those parties within the new faith who differed from him raised fresh questions: Were the evangelical authorities to tolerate these sectarians, or were they to repress any deviation from the Wittenberg doctrine?

To formulate any definite answers to such questions was rendered still more difficult in Luther’s case by the fact that prudence compelled him to exercise great reticence and caution in his utterances on many such points.[866] On the one hand he might easily have spoilt his whole work in the eyes of his cautious sovereign had he proclaimed openly the right of his friends among the nobles to resist the Emperor even by force. On the other, many would have been repelled had he laid down the principle of intolerance towards Zwinglians and Anabaptists as strongly at the commencement as he did later. In considering his doctrine concerning the secular authorities and the obedience due to them, we must simply take his utterances in their historical sequence, at the same time keeping a watchful eye on his actual behaviour in which we shall find at once their explanation and justification.[867] Only in this way shall we arrive at a clear estimation of his tangled ideas on secular authority and religious toleration.[868]

As to his varying theories,[869] at the outset and during the first stage of his revolt against the Church, Luther was fond of launching out into very questionable and far-reaching statements concerning the secular authority, as appears, for instance, in his tract addressed in 1520 to the German Nobility. Where the authorities are on the side of the Evangel, their power is so great that they may exercise their office “unhindered,” “even against Pope, bishop, parson, monk or nun or whatever else there be”; in that case, too, the secular authorities are perfectly justified in summoning clerics to answer before their tribunal.[870] “St. Paul says to all Christians,” Luther argues, “ ‘Let every soul’—hence, I suppose, even the Pope himself—‘be subject to higher powers, for they bear not the sword in vain.’ … St. Peter, too, foretold that men would arise who would despise the temporal rulers, which has indeed come to pass through the rights of the clergy.”[871] In such wise does he charge the past.

But now, he continues (owing to his efforts), “the secular power has become a member of the ghostly body, and, though its office is temporal, yet it has been raised to a spiritual dignity; its work may now be done freely and unhindered among all the members of the whole body, punishing and compelling, where guilt deserves it or necessity demands, regardless of Pope, bishop or priest, let them threaten and ban as they please.”[872] It is clear how the interests of the “reformation” he has planned impel him to extend the rights of the secular power, even in the spiritual domain, over all who resist.

In his work “On the secular power,” of March, 1523, we find an entirely different language.

Here he insists with great emphasis on the fact that the secular authorities have no right to interfere in the spiritual domain. The explanation of his change of attitude is that here he is thinking of the Catholic authorities who were placing obstacles in the way of the spread of the Lutheran apostasy. His teaching is: The secular power exists and is ordained by God, but it has no concern with spiritual matters, may not place difficulties in the way of the preaching of the “Word,” and has no right to curtail the interests of the Evangel, by prohibiting Luther’s books, by threatening excommunication, or by hindering the new worship. He thus sets up general principles which are quite at variance with the line of action he himself constantly pursued where the authorities were favourable to his cause.

His teaching he expounds in this way: Temporal rulers are, it is true, established in the world by the will of God and must be obeyed; but their sword must not invade a domain which does not belong to them; it is not their business to render men pious, and they have nothing whatever to do with the good, their only object being to prevent outward crimes and to maintain outward peace as “God’s task-masters and executioners.”[873] He speaks almost as though there were two kingdoms of men, one, of the wicked and those who are not “Christians,” coming under the rule of the authorities and belonging to the kingdom of the world; the other, the kingdom of God, whose members are not subject to earthly laws and authorities; such are “all true believers in and beneath Christ.”

Not only could this curious dualism be objected to on the score of want of clearness, but the assertion that the secular power was merely an “executioner” for the punishment of outward crime actually tended to abase and degrade it. The olden Church had, on the contrary, exalted the secular power by permitting its representatives to share in many ways in the spiritual work of the Church, and by desiderating the harmonious co-operation of the two powers, spiritual and secular, in the interests of the ultimate end of mankind.