In the early days of his public protest against the olden Church, when Luther proclaimed the “universal priesthood of all Christians,” there could as yet be no question of any compulsion in matters of doctrine, seeing that he expressly conceded to the Christian congregations the right and power to weigh all doctrines and “to set up or send adrift their teachers and soul-herds.” Every Christian, so he wrote, who saw that a true teacher was lacking, was taught and consecrated by God as a priest and was also bound, “under pain of the loss of his soul and of incurring the Divine displeasure, to teach the Word of God.”[802] It is not necessary after all we have already said[803] to point out how impossible it is to square such far-reaching concessions to freedom with any idea of a positive body of doctrine. The concessions may, however, have appealed to him particularly because he himself was disposed to claim the utmost freedom in respect of the dogmas of Catholicism. In those days he was delighted to hear himself extolled as the champion of freedom and the right of private judgment. The interests of his party made such extravagant toleration commendable, for any attempt at compulsion in doctrinal matters, particularly at the beginning, would have lost him many friends. He was also anxious that it should be said of the new Church that it had spread of its own accord and only owing to the power of the Word.
In the sermon he preached at Erfurt in 1522 in support of the change of religion in that town he had declared, that every Christian, thanks to his kingly priesthood, was an “image of Christ” and a “cleric,” and “able to judge of all things”; to his decision, based on the Word of Christ, “the Pope and all his followers were subject”; “he judges all things and is judged of none.”[804]
Even two years later, in words proclaiming universal freedom of belief, he had dissuaded the Saxon Princes from taking violent measures against the fanatics: “Let the spirits fall upon each other and clash!” What cannot stand must in any case succumb in the fight, and only those who fight rightly are assured of the crown. “Just let them preach as they please!”[805]
In 1525 he told Carlstadt and the Sacramentarians that each one was free to follow his own conscience and to question the Sacrament or refuse to receive it.[806] This agrees with his statement of 1521: “No one must be forced into the faith, but the Gospel must be set before everyone and all be admonished to believe, yet left free to obey or not. All the Sacraments must be free to everyone.”[807]
Luther registered a formal protest against the ancient right of proceeding against heretics by means of temporal penalties, particularly that of death. “To burn heretics is against the will of the Holy Ghost,” so he declared in 1518 and again in 1520.[808] In 1520 he said: “Heretics must be overcome by argument, not by fire.”[809]
Most of what he was to say subsequently on the question of public toleration refers to the bearing of the authorities, especially towards the Anabaptists and Zwinglians. That he himself, however, and every follower of his Evangel, were bound to regard all opinions which diverged from his own as godless heresies and brand them as such, that he had never doubted from the moment he had discovered his new Evangel. In accordance with this he proceeds to demand more and more strongly of the “heretics” within the pale unconditional acceptance of all the articles of faith.[810]
What were the authorities to do faced by teachings so divergent? In 1523, in a writing indeed intended mainly for the Catholic rulers and opponents of his doctrine, Luther is decidedly quite against any interference on the part of the authorities: “To resist heretics, that is the bishops’ duty to whom this office is committed, not the princes’; for heresy can never be overborne by a strong hand.… Here God’s Word must fight.”[811] In April, 1525, in the midst of the Peasant War, in his “Ermanunge,” he enunciates, not without some thought of his personal ends, this general principle—“Yes, the authorities must not oppose what each one chooses to believe and teach, whether it be Gospel or lie; it is enough that they hinder the preaching of feud and lawlessness.”[812]
Boehmer justly points out, that Luther’s standpoint and doctrine as a whole, essentially spelt not only “unfettered freedom of teaching, but also entire freedom of worship.”
Meanwhile, however, Luther had already repeatedly urged those in power, especially his own sovereign, to do their supposed duty, and back up the new Evangel by their authority and by forbidding Catholic worship, the Mass and Catholic sermons.
In what follows we shall deal with Luther’s behaviour towards the Catholics, as distinguished from his attitude towards sectarians within his own camp.
We should be making a serious mistake were we to judge of Luther’s tolerance towards the olden religion from his statements above on behalf of freedom. In Protestant literature, even to the present day, such a one-sided view has found a place, though it has long since been rejected by clear-sighted historians of that faith. In the course of the above narrative instances have been met with repeatedly of Luther’s intolerance in theory and practice with regard to those who thought differently. Here we shall refer concisely to various details already set on record and then draw some new facts and utterances from the abundant store bearing on the matter in hand.
It was “his duty to oppose false teachers,” Luther had written to his Elector on May 8, 1522, of the Canons of Altenburg.[813] In the same way, with much storming, he had insisted that the secular power should make an end of Catholic worship in the collegiate church of Wittenberg.
From the standpoint of his principles it is rather remarkable that, when the persecuted Canons of Wittenberg appealed to the Elector’s authority, Luther retorted: “What has the Elector to do with us in such things?”[814] and that, later, in one of his sermons, he boldly replied to their objections in law: “What care we about the Elector? He commands only in worldly matters.”[815] In making a stand against the celebration of Mass at Wittenberg he had frankly declared: “It is the duty of the authorities to resist and to punish such public blasphemy,” just as they are bound to punish the blasphemies uttered in the streets by godless men. The Elector and his Councillors were quite aware of the contradictions involved in Luther’s teaching. Hence, at the Prince’s instance, the Court pointed out to him on Nov. 24, 1524, that “he himself preached that the Word should be left to fight its own way, and that this it would do in its own good time, so God willed”; he ought himself to be the first “to practise what he taught and preached.”[816] In spite of this Luther, soon after, was successful in violently making a clean sweep of the Catholic Mass at Wittenberg.[817]
The theory that the Evangelical ruler must use force to root out Catholic worship was proclaimed by the Court chaplain Spalatin, a man “standing altogether under Luther’s influence, and who, as a rule, merely voiced his views”;[818] this he did in a letter of May 1, 1525, where he cites the prescriptions of the Mosaic law (Deut. vii.). According to this the secular authorities are bound “by the Law of God to abrogate idolatrous and blasphemous worship”; any further toleration on the part of the Elector of “idolatry” in his lands would be a great sin; on the other hand it would be a “great, consoling and Christian work” were he “to put the Christian bit in the mouth of all the clergy.” “Ah, that would indeed be a noble work!”[819] To the successor of the then Elector who died shortly after this, Spalatin wrote on Oct. 1, 1525: “Dr. Martin also says, that Your Electoral Highness ought in no way to suffer anyone to proceed any longer with the unchristian ceremonies, or to set them up again”;[820] on Jan. 10, 1526, he, together with two Altenburg preachers, backed up the petition to the Elector for the extirpation of “idolatry” by pointing to the example of the pious kings of the Jews.[821] At Altenburg and elsewhere such exhortations were crowned all too speedily with success.
“A secular ruler,” Luther himself wrote to the Elector Johann on Feb. 9, 1526, “must not permit his underlings to be led into strife and discord by contumacious preachers, for this may issue in uproar and sedition, but in each locality there must be but one kind of preaching.”[822]
On such grounds, however, Protestantism itself might just as well have been denied a hearing, seeing that it had come to disturb the peace, the “one kind of preaching” and the one faith. The princes, however, spurred on by their theologians, seized only too eagerly on this principle, using it in favour of the innovations. The Elector Johann declared as early as Feb. 31, 1526, that he had “graciously taken note of the Memorandum” and would, “for the future, conduct himself in such matters as beseemed a Christian”;[823] and he kept his word.
The intolerance shown to Catholics and their systematic oppression in Saxony stands in blatant contrast with the claim made, that Luther by his preaching had won religious freedom for the German lands. Banishment was the punishment incurred by those who chose to remain steadfast in their attachment to the Catholic faith. Thus, in 1527, it was expressly laid down in the regulations for the Saxon Visitation, that: “Whoever is suspected in the matter of the Sacraments, or of any other error in the faith” is to “be summoned and questioned, and, if necessary, witnesses against him are also to be called.” “Such an ‘inquisition’ is also to be instituted by the Visitors in the case of the laity.”[824] If they refuse to abjure their “errors” they are to be given a certain time to sell their possessions and to quit the land, with a “warning of the severe penalties” with which any ecclesiastic or layman will be visited who is again found in the country.[825] Bearing in mind the difficulty emigration presented at that time, particularly in the case of the people on the land, one can appreciate the injustice of the measure.
Luther and his followers frequently enough appealed to theological grounds in support of such measures, above all to the Old Testament enactments against blasphemers and contemners of religion. One-sidedly they simply applied to their own day and to their own controversial purposes, the exceptional regulations of the Mosaic dispensation which sought to preserve the religion of the chosen people in the midst of a heathen world. In this connection Luther appeals to Moses without the slightest hesitation though, as a rule, armed with the New Testament, he is ready enough to assail the Mosaic Law; he also set up the pious “Kings of Juda and Israel” as patterns. Wenceslaus Link did much the same when he summoned the Altenburg Town-Council to make a stand against Catholicism and abrogate the “lies and fond inventions of the idolaters”;[826] nor did Spalatin hesitate to point out to the Saxon Elector the commendation the pious rulers of the Jews had earned from God for their bloody repression of idolatry.[827]
Another ground for compulsion, to which Spalatin gives expression in a letter to the Elector, was, that: They must not forget how “many a poor man would more readily come to the Evangel, were that wretched system [of Popery and its idolatry] no longer in existence.” In other words, were Catholic worship rooted out, Catholics would more easily be won over to the Evangel.[828] It was on such a standpoint as this that the Augsburg declaration of 1530 made by the theologians of the Saxon Electorate was based. The Emperor had demanded from the Protesting Princes toleration of the Catholic worship for those of their subjects who chose to remain Catholic. The theologians thereupon expressed themselves against such an arrangement, and urged that, in this case, Lutheran proselytism would be hampered: “Were it to be said that the rulers were not to hinder it, though the preachers were to preach against it, it is clear of what [small] good would be all the teaching and preaching of the ministers.”[829]
In the Duchy of Saxony, as everybody knows, the introduction of Lutheranism was opposed by Duke George. His severity he justified by appealing to the thousand-year-old law of the one great world-wide Church, the Church of the Apostles, of the Fathers and martyrs and Œcumenical Councils and great missioners of all ages, a law, moreover, sanctioned by the Empire. When, in 1533, a number of Lutherans were banished from the Duchy[830] Luther seized upon this as a pretext for controversy. Roundly scolding the “Ducal tyrant,” he declared this sentence of banishment to be “a devilish and criminal thing.” The authority of the sovereign, so he now wrote, again contradicting himself, “only extends over life and property in secular matters.”[831] But, after George’s death in 1539 and the accession of his brother Henry, Luther’s tone changed, for Henry held Lutheran views. In a letter he sent about that time to the Elector Johann Frederick, he is angry because more than 500 of the Saxon clergy, all of them “venomous Papists,” had not yet been driven out. “For the sake of the poor souls, many thousands of whom live neglected under such parsons,” he urges the Elector to do his best “to help and promote a Visitation.”[832] He demands that Duke Henry, as the sovereign and protector of the bishopric of Meissen, should “put a damper on the blasphemous idolatry” as best he could, for “the Princes who are able to do so should at once abolish Baal and all idolatry.”[833] He also wished that the bishop of Meissen, though a Prince of the Empire, should “at once bow his head to the Evangel”; in this matter there is no need for “much disputing.”
It was but natural that such intolerance often led to scenes of brutality; such was the case in the cathedral of Meissen, where the splendid tomb of Benno, the saintly bishop of Meissen, was hewn in pieces, and the statue of the patron, which was an object of veneration to all the people, was set up headless at the church door as a laughing-stock for the Lutherans.[834]
Hand in hand with such legal coercion, which he both approved and furthered, went Luther’s declaration—which, though seeming to promote freedom, really constituted a new encroachment on the rights of conscience—viz. that: No one was to be forced to believe in his heart, but that “the people were to be driven to the sermons for the sake of the Ten Commandments, so that they might at least learn the outward works of obedience.”[835] “It would be grand,” so he told Margrave George of Brandenburg, “if your Serene Highness on the strength of your secular authority enjoined on both parsons and parishioners under pain of penalties the teaching and learning of the Catechism, in order, that, as they are Christians and wish to be called such, they may, please God, be compelled to learn and to know what a Christian ought to know, whether he believes it or not.”[836] At his instance attendance at the sermons was imposed on all people in the Saxon Electorate under pain of penalty, whatever they might think of the preaching.[837]
God Himself has abrogated “all authority and power where it is opposed to the Evangel,”[838] so, as early as 1522, ran one of the principles he used for the violent suppression of Catholic worship. Of the Catholic foundations he says in the same year: “If the preacher does not make men pious (i.e. does not preach according to Luther’s doctrine), the goods are no longer his.”[839] Violent interference with the Mass was, according to him, no revolt when it came from the established authorities.[840] “It is the duty of the sovereign, as ruler and brother Christian, to drive away the wolves,”[841] and those who do not preach the Evangel are “wolves”; it is “an urgent duty to drive away the wolf from the sheepfold.”[842] The Pope himself, however, deserves the worst fate, for he is the “werwolf who devours everything. Just as all seek to kill the werwolf, and very rightly, so is it a duty to suppress the Pope by force.”[843]
“Not only the spiritual but also the secular power must yield to the Evangel, whether cheerfully or otherwise.”[844]
Hence it follows that the salvation of his soul requires of a Christian prince the prohibition of the Popish worship.[845] If it is his duty to resist the Turk far more must he oppose the Pope: “What harm does the Turk do?” It is clear that, “as regards both body and soul the government of the Pope is ten times worse than that of the Turk.”[846]
“Whoever wishes to live amongst the burghers must keep the laws of the borough and not dishonour or abuse them, else he must pack and go.” The authorities are not to “allow themselves and their people to be forced into idolatry and falsehood.”[847] Hence “let the authorities step in and try the case and whichever party does not agree with Scripture, let him be ordered to hold his tongue.”[848] The Prince must behave like David, and hold that, as regards “God and the service of His Sovereignty everything must be equal and made to intermingle, whether it be termed spiritual or secular,” being “kneaded together into one cake.”[849] How many false teachers had David, his model, not been forced “to expel or in other ways stop their mouths.”[850]
It is not, however, enough to impose silence on them. They must—so Luther began to teach about 1530—be treated as public blasphemers and punished accordingly:[851] They “must not be suffered but must be banished as open blasphemers.” Thus must we act with those who “teach that Christ did not die for our sins but that each one must atone for them on his own; for this also is a public blasphemy against the Gospel.”[852] Hundreds of times does he charge the Catholics with thus robbing the saving death of Christ of all significance by their doctrine of good works.
These intolerant principles, which could not but lead to persecution, were made even worse by the abuse and invective which Luther publicly showered on the representatives of Catholicism. He taught the mob to call them “blasphemous ministers of the Babylonian whore,” knaves, bloodhounds, hypocrites and murderers. In the Articles of Schmalkalden which found a place among the Symbolic Books, he introduces the Pope as the “dragon” who leads astray the whole world, as the “real Antichrist” and as the “devil himself” whom it was impossible to “worship as Master or as God,” for which reason he would not suffer the Pope as “Head or Lord”; they must say to him: “May God rebuke thee, Satan!” (Zach. iii. 2).[853] Among his monstrous caricatures of the Pope he also included one depicting the “well-deserved reward of the Most Satanic Pope and his Cardinals,” as the inscription runs below. Here the Pope is seen on the gallows with three Cardinals; their tongues which have been torn out by the root are nailed to the gibbet and devils are scurrying off with their souls. The picture is embellished with the following doggerel:
At the right moment let us fall upon the Turks “and the priests and smite them dead!” Only then shall we be successful against the Turks! So runs one of Luther’s sayings in the Table-Talk.[855]
“Oh, that our Right Reverend Cardinals, Popes and Roman Legates had more kings of England to put them to death!”[856] This he wrote in 1535, after the execution of Thomas More and John Fisher by Henry VIII.
As early as 1520 he had exclaimed against Prierias: If thieves are punished by the rope, murderers by the sword and heretics by fire, why not proceed against “these noxious teachers of destruction—these Cardinals, Popes and the whole swarm of the Roman Sodom, who are ever ceaselessly destroying the Church of God—with every kind of weapon, and wash our hands in their blood?”[857]
Towards the end of his life, in 1545, he showed that he was still faithful to such views in spite of all the changes which had come over some of his other leading ideas. Let “the Pope, the Cardinals and the whole scoundrelly train of his idolatrous, Popish Holiness be seized,” so he declares in “Das Bapstum vom Teuffel gestifft,” and put to the death they deserve, either on the gallows to which their tongues may be nailed, or by drowning the “blasphemous knaves” in the Sea at Ostia.[858]
“It pleases me,” he wrote on Dec. 2, 1536, to King Christian of Denmark, “that Your Majesty has extirpated the bishops who never cease to persecute God’s Word and to worry the secular power; I shall do my best to explain and vindicate your action.”[859] At Wittenberg, as we see from a letter of a Wittenberg theologian, the report was current that the Danish king had “struck off the heads of six bishops.”[860] This false account “seems to have been credited by Luther.”[861] If this be so, then it seems that he was perfectly ready to justify so cruel a deed. The truth is, that, King Christian, after having had the bishops arrested (Aug. 20, 1536), released them as soon as they had promised to resign their bishoprics.
In the summer of 1540 Luther had it that the Pope and the monks were to blame for the many fires in Northern and Central Germany. “If this turns out true, then there will be nothing left for us but to take up arms in common against all the monks and shavelings; I too shall join in, for it is right to slay the miscreants like mad dogs.”[862] The worst of the lot, according to him, were the Franciscans. “If I had all the Franciscan friars in one house,” he said a few days later, “I would set fire to it, for, in the monks the good seed is gone, and only the chaff is left. To the fire with them!”[863]
No one, in the least familiar with Luther’s writings, will be so foolish as to believe that it was really his intention to kill the Catholic clergy and monks. His bloodthirsty demands were but the violent outbursts of his own deep inward intolerance. They were called forth occasionally by other alleged misdeeds of Popery, of its advocates and friends, for instance, by the burdensome taxes imposed by the Church, by her use of excommunication, and by the action taken against the Lutherans, particularly by the resolutions of the Diets for the suppression of Protestantism. Nor must we forget that the religious dissensions grew into a sort of permanent warfare and that war tends to produce effusions such as would be unthinkable in times of peace; nor was the warlike feeling a monopoly of the Lutheran side.
But who was it who was responsible for having provoked the war?
Occasional counsels to patience and endurance, to self-restraint and consideration were indeed given by Luther from time to time[864] (they have been diligently collected by his modern supporters), but, generally speaking, they are drowned in the din of his controversial invective.
What was to be expected when the people, who were already profoundly excited by the social conditions, were told: “Better were it that all bishops were put to death, and all foundations and convents rooted out than that one soul should be seduced” by Popish error.[865] “What better do they deserve than to be stamped out by a great revolt?”[866] If his reforms were rejected then it was to be wished that monasteries and foundations “were all reduced to one great heap of ashes.”[867] “A grand destruction of all the monasteries, etc., would be the best reformation!”[868] What wonder “were the Princes, the nobles and the laity to hit Pope, bishop, priest and monk on the head and drive them out of the land?”[869] The “Rhine would hardly suffice to drown” the many “bull-mongers,” Cardinals and “knaves.”[870]
In the above we have dealt with Luther’s intolerance in theory and practice towards the Catholic Church. It remains for us to look at his attitude towards the sects within his own camp.
The question, how far they were to be tolerated, or whether it would be better forcibly to suppress them was first brought home to Luther by the Anabaptist movement under Thomas Münzer. Sure of the upper hand, Luther decided, as we know, at the end of July, 1524, to advise the Saxon Princes to leave the Anabaptists in peace so far as their doctrines were concerned. “Let them preach as they please,” was his advice, for “there ‘must needs be heresies’” (1 Cor. xi. 19).[871] He explained to Lazarus Spengler of Nuremberg on Feb. 4, 1525, that the Anabaptists were not to be punished, particularly with “bodily penalties,” because, in his opinion, they were no real blasphemers, but merely “like the Turks or straying Christians.”[872] In May of the same year he showed himself disposed to universal toleration. “The authorities are not to hinder anyone from teaching and believing what he pleases”;[873] a principle which, as we have shown above (p. 239), he himself had contravened in practice as early as 1522, and was finally to set aside altogether.
As for the Anabaptists, in 1527 Luther was not yet in favour of the “putting to death” and bloody “rooting out” of these sectarians. In 1528 he even taught in his exposition of the Parable of the Good Seed and the Tares that “we are not to fight the fanatics with the sword.”[874] What made him hesitate to advise the putting to death of these heretics was, as he told his friend Wenceslaus Link of Nuremberg in 1528, the apprehension that this might lead to abuses; he feared lest, in the time to come, we might turn the sword against the best “among us.”[875] But without a doubt he approved of the Edict of the Elector Johann (Jan. 17, 1528) which proscribed the writings of the Anabaptists, Sacramentarians and fanatics throughout the land—if indeed the Edict itself may not be traced directly to Luther, as Zwingli suspected.[876] In 1528 it also seemed to him right to decree the penalty of banishment in the case of the Anabaptists.[877]
When, however, the danger had become more evident, which the Anabaptist heresy spelt both to the land-frith and the foundations of Christianity, not to speak of the Lutheran teaching, Luther adopted a sterner line of action.
His views altered in 1530. After a Mandate had been issued in the Saxon Electorate against the “secret preachers and conventicles, Anabaptists and other baneful novel teaching,” six Anabaptists were executed early in the year at Reinhardsbrunn in the duchy of Saxe-Gotha. The discussion which took place on this event gave Melanchthon occasion to declare in Feb., 1530, that, “even though the Anabaptists do not advocate anything seditious or openly blasphemous” it was, “in his opinion, the duty of the authorities to put them to death.”[878] In the spring of 1530, with the Anabaptists in his mind, Luther, in his commentary on Ps. lxxxii. dealt with the question whether the authorities “ought to forbid strange teachings or heresies and punish them, seeing that no one should or can force men into the Faith.”[879]
His detailed reply to the question which it was then impossible any longer to blink, centres round the distinction he makes of two kinds of heretics, viz. those who were seditious, and those who merely “teach the opposite of some clear article of faith.” Of the latter, i.e. the non-revolutionary, he says expressly: “These also must not be allowed but must be punished like public blasphemers.” Of those, who, though holding no office, force themselves in as preachers, and thus imperil the faith and lead to risings, he writes, that their oath of allegiance obliged the burghers not to listen to them but rather to report them either to their parson or to the authorities. If such a one will not desist “then let the authorities hand over knaves of that ilk to their proper master, to wit Master Hans” (i.e. the hangman).[880] As for those Anabaptists who preached open revolt, they had, in his opinion, by that very fact incurred the penalties of the law. At any rate it was not merely on account of their sedition that Luther wished to see the Anabaptists punished.
Another statement of his has come down to us from an outside source. Luther’s friend, Lazarus Spengler of Nuremberg, had a little before this, on March 17, 1530, sought to secure from Luther, through Veit Dietrich, some directions on how to deal with heretics. Dietrich verbally obtained from his master the desired instructions and promptly sent them to Spengler by letter.[881] They were to the effect that not merely the heretics who offend against public order were to be punished, but also those who merely do harm to religion, such as the Sacramentarians (Zwinglians) and Papists; as they are to be looked upon as blasphemers, they cannot be suffered. It is noteworthy, that, in Luther’s correspondence in 1530, in a letter from the Coburg to Justus Jonas, we find him congratulating himself on the report (a false one) of the execution of a certain heretic. On receiving the announcement that Johannes Campanus, the anti-Trinitarian, had suffered death as a heretic at Liége, Luther wrote: “I learnt this with joy” (“lætus audivi”).[882]
Early in October, 1531, agreeably with the Saxon Elector’s Mandate, a number of persons suspected of holding Anabaptist views were taken to Eisenach for punishment and were there put to the torture; it was now judged advisable to obtain a fresh memorandum from the Wittenberg theologians.
Accordingly, at the end of 1530, Melanchthon at the instance of the Electoral Court once more took the matter in hand. He drafted a memorandum on the duty of the secular authorities in the matter of religious differences, with particular reference to the Anabaptists. In it he set forth at length the grounds for a regular system of coercion by the sword. Luther, too, set his name to the document with the words: “It pleases me, Martin Luther.” In it the sectarians were reprobated as blasphemers because they reject “the public preaching office [the ministry] and teach that men can become holy without any preaching and ecclesiastical worship.” They ought to be visited with death by the public authorities whose duty it is to “befriend and uphold ecclesiastical order”; and in like manner should their adherents and those whom they have led astray be dealt with, who insist, “that our baptism and preaching is not Christian and therefore that ours is not the Church of Christ.”[883] Nevertheless, we can see from the words Luther adds after his signature that the decision, or at least its severity, aroused some misgivings in him. He says: “Though it may appear cruel to punish them by the sword, yet it is even more cruel of them to condemn the preaching office and not to teach any certain doctrine, to persecute the true doctrine, and, over and above all this, to seek to destroy the kingdoms of this world.”
It is quite true that Luther and Melanchthon had an eye on the seditious character of these sects, yet present-day Protestant theologians are not justified when they try to explain and excuse their severity on this ground. On the contrary, as we have already pointed out, the texts plainly show that they were chiefly concerned with the punishment of the sectarians’ offences against the faith. This was made the principal point, as we see in Melanchthon’s memorandum just referred to. He says, for instance: “Though many Anabaptists do not openly teach any seditious doctrines,” yet “it was both sedition and blasphemy for them to condemn the public ministry.” It was therefore the duty of the authorities, above all “on account of the second commandment of the Decalogue, to uphold the public ministry” and to take steps against them. If, to boot, they also taught seditious doctrines then it was “all the easier to judge them,” as we read in another memorandum of the Wittenberg theologians (1536) of which Melanchthon was also the draughtsman.[884]
To N. Paulus belongs the credit of having thrown light on the true state of affairs, for, even previous to the publication of his “Protestantismus und Toleranz im 16 Jahrhundert” (1911) he had discussed Luther’s attitude both in his shorter writing, “Luther und die Gewissensfreiheit” (1905) and in various articles in reviews. After him, the Protestant historian P. Wappler took up the same views, particularly in his “Die Stellung Kursachsens … zur Täuferbewegung” (1910). In the “Neues Archiv für sächsische Geschichte” (1911) O. A. Hecker also quite agrees in rejecting the opinion of certain recent Protestant theologians, who, as he says, “all try to exonerate Luther from any hand in the executions for heresy, though they can only do so by dint of forced interpretations, as Paulus pointed out.”[885]
Between 1530 and 1532 Luther’s intolerance comes yet more to the fore; it was indeed his way, when once he had made any view his own, to urge it in the strongest terms. Thus, at the end of 1531, he again alludes to Master Hans: “Those who force themselves in without any office or commission are not worthy of being called false prophets but are vagrants and knaves, who ought to be handed over to the tender mercies of Master Hans.”[886] “It is not allowed that each one should proceed according to his own ideas and set up his own doctrine and fancy himself a sage, and dictate to, and find fault with, others.” “This I call judging of doctrine, which is one of the greatest and most scatheful vices on earth, whence indeed all the fanatics have sprung.” The two last sentences occur in his sermons on St. Matthew’s Gospel.[887]
Still more striking is the demand he makes of Duke Albert of Prussia concerning the Zwinglians; here his zeal against these heretics seems to blind him, for his arguments recoil against himself, though apparently he does not notice it. Every Prince, he says in a psychologically remarkable passage, who does not wish “most gruesomely to burden his conscience” must cast out the Zwinglians from his land, because, by their denial of the presence of Christ in the Supper, they set up a doctrine “contrary to the traditional belief held everywhere and to the unanimous testimony of all.”
But how many doctrines had not Luther himself set up contrary to the ancient faith and to the unanimous testimony of all? It was, so he goes on, “both dangerous and terrible” to “believe anything contrary to the unanimous testimony, belief and teaching of the whole of the Holy Christian Church, which, from the beginning and for more than 1500 years, had been universally received throughout the world.” This was tantamount to “not believing in the Christian Church at all, and not merely to condemn the whole of the Holy Christian Church as a damned heretic, but also Christ Himself together with all the Apostles and Prophets, who had formulated the Article which we now recite, ‘I believe one Holy Christian Church,’ and borne such powerful witness to it.”[888]
“The worldly authorities bear the sword,” so Luther said in his Home-Postils, “with orders to prevent all scandal, so that it may not intrude and do harm. But the most dangerous and horrible scandal is where false doctrine and worship finds its way in.… For this reason the Christian authorities must be on the look-out for such scandal.… They must resist it stoutly and realise that nothing else will do save they make use of the sword and of the full extent of their power in order to preserve the doctrine pure and the worship clean and undefiled.”
“Then everything will go well.”[889]
We have also his exposition of Ps. ci. (1534), where there occurs the eulogy of David, the “scourge of heretics.”[890]
How he was in the habit of dealing with the Sacramentarians at a later date the following instance may serve to show, which at the same time reveals his coarseness and his reliance on the secular authorities. To Luther’s doctrine that Christ was bodily present, not only in the Host, but throughout the world, the Sacramentarians had rejoined: Good, then we shall partake of Him everywhere, in “spoon, plate and beer-can!”[891] To this Luther’s reply ran: See “what graceless swine we abandoned Germans for the most part are, lacking both manners and reason, who, when we hear of God, esteem it a fairy tale.… All seek to do their business into it and to wipe their back parts on it. The temporal authorities ought to punish such blasphemers.… God knows I write of such high things most unwillingly because they must needs be set before such dogs and swine.… Hearken you, you pig, dog, or fanatic, or whatever brainless donkey you may be: Though Christ’s body is everywhere, yet you will not be able to lay hold of it so easily.… Begone to your pigsty and wallow in your own muck! … there is a distinction between His Presence and your laying hold of Him; He is free and nowhere bound,” etc.—Luther himself was, however, very far from making clear what the distinction was. After much else not to the point he concludes: “Oh, how few there are, even among the highly learned, who have ever meditated so profoundly on this article concerning Christ!”[892]
The treatment of the sectarians in the Saxon Electorate was in keeping with the theories and counsels of Luther and his theologians.
Relentless measures were taken against them on account of their deviation from the faith even when no charge of sedition was forthcoming. On Jan. 15, 1532, the Elector Johann admitted the following as his guiding principle for interfering: “It is the duty of the authorities to punish such teachers and seducers, with God and with a good conscience.… For were heretics and contemners of the Word of God not punished we should be acting against the prescribed laws which we are in every way bound to observe.”[893]