Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  It is well worth our while to consider the following general grounds he assigns for his repudiation of all interference of the authorities in matters of faith, for, not long after, his position will be very different. He declares that, speaking generally, the authorities have “no power over souls”; the soul is removed altogether from the hands of men and “placed in the hands of God alone.” The ruler has just as little control over a soul as he has over the moon. “Who would not be accounted crazy who commanded the moon to shine at his pleasure?” Besides, Pope, Bishops and Schoolmen are “without God’s Word,” “and yet they wish to be termed Christian Princes, which may God prevent!” Further proofs follow from the Bible, where we read, that God alone knows and governs all things, and from the fact, that “every man’s salvation depends on his belief, and he must accordingly look to it that he believes aright”; “faith is a voluntary act to which no one can be forced, nay, it is a Divine work of the Spirit.” Moreover, “it is a vain and impossible thing” to compel the heart, and God will bring to a dreadful pass the purblind rulers who are now attempting it.

  His conclusion is that “the secular power must be content to wait and allow people to believe this or the other as they please and are able, and not to compel any man by force.”

  “Heresy can never be withstood by force,” he says further on. “Something else is needed.... God’s Word must here do the work, and if it fails, then the secular power will certainly not achieve it, though it should fill the world with blood.... God’s Word alone can be effective.” Hence the squires should learn at last to cease “destroying ‘heresy,’ and allow God’s Word which enlightens the heart” to have its way.

  Nevertheless, he admits that it is the right of the bishops to “restrain heretics.” “The bishops must do this, for it appertains to their office though not to the Princes” — a theory which Luther persistently refused to see carried to its logical conclusion. He also admits, that “no one has a right to command souls unless he knows how to show them the way to heaven,” — though here, again, he would have denied the consequence which Catholics gathered from this truth, when they urged that the measures adopted by the Empire against the innovations were for the safeguarding of the road to heaven, which an infallible Church points out to mankind. In Luther’s opinion there no longer existed any Church able to “point out the way to heaven” without danger of error. “This no man can do,” he exclaims in the same passage, “but God alone.” It was hopeless for Catholics to argue that the Church did so only in God’s name, and under explicit promise of His assistance. Facts are there to prove that, at the very time when Luther was proclaiming his theories of religious toleration, he was setting them at nought in the most outrageous fashion where Catholics were concerned; he was, however, careful to veil his invitation to abolish their faith and worship under the specious pretext of demolishing abuses, sacrilege and the Kingdom of Antichrist. Nor was it long before he invoked the help of the secular power against sectarians within his own camp.

  Where, towards the close of the work “On the secular power,” Luther passes on to show how Princes, who are “desirous of acting as Christian Princes and lords,” ought to administer their authority, he reaches a less controversial subject and is able to expound in that popular, imaginative language which he knew so well how to handle certain wholesome views which had already found expression in earlier times. In the forcible exhortations he here gives, rulers desirous of profiting might have found much to learn. Whoever wishes to be a Christian Prince must above all “lay aside the notion that he is to rule and govern by violence.” “Justice must reign at all times and in everything.” His whole mind must be set on “making himself of use and service to his subjects.” Secondly, “he must keep an eye on the Jacks-in-office and on his councillors, and behave towards them in such a way as not to despise any of them, while at the same time not confiding in any one man to such an extent as to leave everything to him.” “Thirdly, he must take care to deal rightly with evil-doers.” “He must not follow those advisers and fire-eaters who urge and tempt him to make war.” “Fourthly — what ought really to have been placed first — ... the ruler must behave towards his God as a Christian, submitting himself to Him with entire confidence, and praying for wisdom to rule well.”

  Concerning the latter point, viz. the attitude of the ruler towards God and towards religion, which, according to Luther, really should come first, the exhortations of earlier days addressed to the rulers, hardly ever failed to represent the protection of the Kingdom of God as the noblest task of any sovereign, who looked beyond temporal things to the world to come. Luther himself at a later period commends the protection and extension of the Kingdom of God most earnestly and eloquently to all rulers who followed the new faith, and instances the example of the Jewish Kings and Jewish priesthood. Here, however, where he is full of other interests, we find not a word of the kind. On the subject of their relation to God, all he does is to remind the Princes in one sentence of the need of “true confidence and heartfelt prayer,” and, having done so, he breaks off and hurriedly brings the work to an end. In this circumstance, in itself insignificant, Luther’s violent breach with tradition is very apparent. Here, where, for the first time in any work of his, he puts forth his views as to what the conduct of secular authorities should be, in dealing with their relations to faith and worship, he has not a word in support of the recommendation to protect religion, albeit so justifiable and hitherto so usual; he could not give such a recommendation, because a few pages before he had laid it down that “the secular government has laws which do not extend beyond life and property and what is external on earth.” “The secular power must leave people free to believe this or that as they please”; “the blind, miserable wretches [the Catholic Princes] see not how vain and impossible a thing they are undertaking.” — Nowhere in the writing, as a Protestant theological critic remarks, “does the idea appear that a Christian ruler has the right or the duty to pass beyond the limits of his temporal jurisdiction and to concern himself with ecclesiastical matters.”

  It is quite remarkable how Luther reduces the action of the secular power and the rights of the authorities to a judicial constraint to be exercised against evil-doers, or, as he says, to the task of a mere executioner.

  For the explanation of these ideas on the secular power, two points are of especial importance: In the first place, Luther was at that time somewhat disappointed with the Princes and the nobles. In his work “To the Nobility” he had urged them to make an end of the Papal rule, and now he was vexed to see that, almost to a man, they had declined to do anything, whilst he himself was under the ban of the Empire. Secondly, it was his idea of the inward action of the Evangel upon souls and his conception of a sort of invisible Church, which induced him to exclude altogether the secular power from the spiritual domain, and to speak in exaggerated and disparaging terms of the “outward actions” with which alone it was concerned. In those years, when he was still to some extent under the influence of his early pseudo-mysticism, he was fond of picturing to himself the community of believers as an assembly of all those who had been awakened by “the Word,” and who, in spirit, were far above the compulsion of any earthly regulations. Thus, with him, the Church, in comparison with the political community, tended to evaporate into a mere union of souls, scarcely perceptible to earthly eyes.

  To us now it is clear that, in spite of every effort to the contrary, the new Church was bound in process of time to become entirely dependent on the secular power, first and foremost in its outward administration. Luther’s spiritual Church could not endure but for the support of the authorities.

  It is notorious that the tendency to make his Church depend upon the secular authorities, as soon as they had embraced his cause, was part of Luther’s plan from the very outset. A State Church corresponded with his requirements. However much at the commencement Luther might emphasise the congregational ideal, tracing the whole authority of the freshly forme
d communities back to it, viz. to the priestly powers inherent in all the faithful, yet, as occasion arises, he falls back on the one external authority left standing, now that he has definitely set aside one of the two powers recognised of old.

  In the sixteenth century the Church was confronted not only by official Protestantism, but by various other opposing bodies, Anabaptists, fanatics and anti-Trinitarians. If among all these only the Wittenberg, Zürich and Geneva groups “were able to assert themselves, this,” says a recent Protestant theologian, Paul Wernle, “was not due, or at least not solely due, to the fact, that they were more true or more profound than the others, but that they accommodated themselves better to existing conditions, and, above all, to the State.” Karl Sell, a Protestant professor of theology, speaks in the same strain: “Where the Reformation gained the day it did so with the help of the secular power, of the Princes or republics and, in every instance, the Reformation itself strengthened the power of these authorities. Upon them devolved the new office of caring ... for religion.... Thus the duty of providing for wholesome doctrine and right faith, for the doctrine which alone could be pleasing to God, became one of the principal concerns of the rulers; hence arose the strict adherence to orthodoxy, the exclusion of erroneous teaching from the confines of the State, in short, the theological police system which prevailed in all Protestant countries till the middle of the seventeenth century.”

  The tendency to seek an alliance with the secular powers did not, however, hinder Luther from degrading the authorities and the Princes in the eyes of the people in the most relentless and public manner. In his mortification at the want of response to his call he allowed himself to be carried away to strictures and predictions which greatly excited the masses.

  In his work “On the secular power” he asks: “Would you learn why God has decreed such a terrible fate to befall the worldly Princes?” His answer is: “God has delivered them up to a perverted mind and means to make an end of them, just as in the case of the clerical Princes.... Secular lords should rule over the land and the people in outward matters. This they neglected. All they could do was to rob and oppress the people, heaping tax upon tax and rate upon rate.” He reminds his readers that the Romans, too, acted unjustly in things both spiritual and temporal — until “they were destroyed. There now! there you see God’s judgment on the great braggarts.”— “There are few Princes,” he says, in the same writing, “who are not regarded as either fools or knaves. This is because they prove themselves to be such, and the common people are growing to understand it; scorn for Princes, which God calls ‘contemptum,’ prevails among the peasants and common folk; and I fear there will be no stopping this unless the Princes behave as beseems Princes and begin again to govern reasonably and justly. Your tyranny and wantonness cannot be endured much longer.” His chief grievance here and elsewhere is, that the rulers do not allow the gospel to be freely preached, but their “dancing, hunting, races, games and such-like worldly pleasures” he also holds up to execration. “Who does not know that in heaven a Prince is like a hare?” i.e. it would take many beaters to locate one. “I do not say these things in the hope that the secular Princes will profit”; it is not indeed absolutely impossible for a Prince to be a good Christian, “but such a case is rare.” A Prince who is at the same time a Christian is “one of the greatest wonders and a most precious sign of the potency of Divine Grace.” — It has been already pointed out that, in seeking the causes of the Peasant-War, we must take into account these inflammatory discourses of Luther’s to the people and his imperious demand for freedom to preach the “Evangel.”

  In his “Exhortation to Peace” of the year 1525, he addresses “the Princes and Lords,” spiritual and temporal, and tells them they have themselves to blame for the seditious risings of the peasants: “We have no one on earth to thank for such disorder and revolt but you, Princes and Lords, and more particularly you, blind bishops and mad priests”; you are not merely enemies of the Evangel, but “rob and tax in order to live in luxury and state, until the poor, common people neither can nor will bear it any longer. The sword is at your throat,” etc.; here he is speaking to the “tyrannical and raging authorities,” as he terms them, of that sword which, according to the words he had flung among the people in earlier years, had long been unsheathed. — To Frederick his Elector he had written, on March 7, 1522, that the Princes who were hostile to the Evangel did not see that they were “forcing the people to rebel, and behaving as though they wished themselves or their children to be exterminated; this, without a doubt, God will send as a punishment.”

  How Luther was wont to criticise the authorities in his sermons, regardless of the effect it might produce in such a period of excitement, appears from a sermon preached on August 20, 1525, i.e. at the time of the great peasant rising in Germany.

  “Let anyone count up the Princes and rulers who fear God more than man. How many do you think they will number? You could write all their names on one finger, or as someone has said, on a signet ring.” “At the Courts nowadays infidelity, egotism and avarice prevail among the Princes and their councillors ... they say: my will be done and forget that there is a God in heaven above.” “These braggarts and great lords think they are always in the right, and want others to give judgment and pass sentence as pleases them. If this is not done, woe betide the judge.”

  In the same sermon, it is true, Luther quotes, happily and at the same time forcibly, passages from Holy Scripture in praise of good rulers. In his popular style he points out what should be the qualities of a righteous sovereign who is solicitous for his people’s welfare. Such a ruler, he says, is courageous and determined in dealing with evil of every sort, and says to himself: “Even though this rich, powerful, strong man, be he Jack or peer, becomes my enemy, I don’t care. By virtue of my office and calling I have one on my side who is far stronger, more respected and more powerful than he, and though he [the enemy] should have all the devils, Princes and Kings on his side, all worse than himself, what is all that to me if He Who sits up there in Heaven is with me? All undertakings should be decided in this way, and one should say: Dear Lord, I leave it in Thy hands, though it should cost me my life. Then God answers: Be steadfast and I will also stand by you.” Luther nevertheless concludes: “But where will you find such rulers? Where are they?” In his sermon of December 3, likewise, he had drawn a beautiful picture of the modesty and renunciation which the example of Christ teaches both Princes and people. Yet there again, at the conclusion, we find him saying: “There is no kingdom that is not addicted to plunder. The Princes are a gang of cut-purses.”

  In the writing “On the secular power,” to which we must here revert, Luther says, that the Princes are, as a rule, “the biggest fools or the worst knaves on the surface of the earth”; a good Prince “had always been a rare bird from the beginning of the world.” Because the world is “of the devil,” therefore “its Princes too are of a like nature.” In spite of this Luther ends by saying, that as God’s “hangmen,” the Princes ought to be obeyed. Later on he was to declare that the passages from the Bible, which he had here quoted in support of this obedience, were his best defence against the charge of diminishing the respect due to Princes, or of teaching rebellion. “The fact that, in that work, I based and confirmed the temporal supremacy and obedience on Scripture is of itself sufficient refutation of such slanders.”

  When he asserts in the above writing, that “Among Christians no authority can or ought to exist, but that everyone should be subject to all,” his intention was not, as has sometimes been erroneously supposed by his opponents, to incite the people against the secular power; the words, though badly chosen, must be understood in connection with his mystical theory of the true believers, i.e. of the invisible Church, being intended to convey, that no authority should rule by enforced commands, but that, on the contrary, all must ‘serve,’ and that even superiors should be mindful of their duty of ‘service.’ It is not, however, very surprising that
such a statement, so unwisely expressed in general terms as that, “among Christians there neither can nor ought to be any authority,” when taken out of its context and published abroad among the people, was misapplied by the malcontents, more especially when taken in conjunction with other questionable utterances of Luther’s.

  His experience with the fanatics, and, still more, the events of the Peasant-War, caused Luther to dwell more and more strongly on the duty and right of the authorities to exercise compulsion towards evil-doers.

  In the work “Against the Heavenly Prophets,” the first published in the stormy year 1525, he says: “The principal thing” required to protect the people against the devils who were teaching through the mouths of the Anabaptist prophets was, “in the case of the common people,” compulsion by the sword and by law. The authorities must force them to be at least “outwardly pious” (true Christians, of course, do all of themselves); the law with its penalties rules over them in the same way that “wild beasts are held in check by chains and bars, in order that outward peace may prevail among the people; for this purpose the temporal authorities are ordained, and it is God’s will that they be honoured and feared.” The change in his views concerning the treatment of sectarians and heretics will, however, be considered elsewhere.

  On the other hand, it must be pointed out here that he at least allows the supreme secular power such authority as to deprecate any armed resistance to it, even where the Evangel is oppressed. In his work “On the secular power” we find him stating: “I say briefly that no Prince may make war on his over-Lord, such as the King, or the Emperor, or any other feudal superior, but must allow him to seize what he pleases. For the higher authorities must not be resisted by force, but merely by bringing them to a knowledge of the truth. If they are converted, it is well; if not, you are free from blame, and suffer injustice for God’s sake.” — As early as 1520 we find him saying: “Even though the authorities act unjustly God wills that they should be obeyed without deceit, unless, indeed, they insist publicly on the doing of what is wrong towards God or men; for to suffer unjustly harms no man’s soul, indeed is profitable to it.” At the outset he persisted in dissuading Princes favourable to his cause from armed resistance to the Emperor.