defend the faith.” The authorities with whom he is here concerned consist almost exclusively of persons who, “instead of allowing God’s Word to have free course,” would fain impose by compulsion the faith of bygone days upon their subjects, thus creating “liars by constraint.” They “command men to feel with the Pope,” but they act “without the clear Word of God” and must therefore necessarily perish in their “perverted understanding.”[874]
In the work in question he nevertheless seeks to establish a general theory, though, partly owing to its being forcibly shaped to meet the special needs of the case, partly because it was based on a certain kind of pseudo-mysticism, the theory remains open to many objections.
The secular power (more particularly where it is Catholic) cannot exercise any authority in spiritual matters, hence, he says, “these two governments must be carefully kept asunder, and both be preserved, the one to render men pious, the other to safeguard outward peace and prevent evil deeds.”[875] In speaking as he does here and elsewhere in this work of the “two governments” he is, however, very far from acknowledging an independent ecclesiastical or spiritual government such as had existed in Catholicism. What he called spiritual government was “without law or command,” and merely “the inward sovereignty of the Word,” “Christ’s spiritual dominion” where souls are ruled by the Evangel; there the Word of God is furthered by teaching and the sacraments, by which minds are led and heresy vanquished; “for Christians must be ruled by faith, not by outward works. … Those who do not believe are not Christians and do not belong to Christ’s kingdom, but to the kingdom of the world, and must therefore be compelled and governed by the sword.” “Christians do all what is good without compulsion and God’s Word suffices them.”[876]—Hence it is certain that he does not look upon this kingdom of the Christian as a real government, seeing that it implies no jurisdiction. The power to make and enforce laws in this world belongs only to the secular authorities. They alone form on earth a real government. “Priests and bishops,” too, have neither “supremacy nor power.”[877]
True believers are subject to “no laws and no sword,”[878] for they stand in need of none. For this reason Christ commands us not to make use of the sword and to refrain from violence. “The words of Christ are clear and peremptory: ‘resist not evil’ ” (Matt. v. 39). These words and the whole passage concerning the blow on the cheek, the Sophists (i.e. the Schoolmen) had indeed interpreted as a mere “counsel.” In reality, however, they constitute a command, though only for “Christians”; “the sword has no place among Christians, hence you cannot use it upon or among Christians, since they need it not.”[879] He is here addressing Duke Johann, the Elector’s brother, who sympathised with his cause and to whom, in the Preface, the work is dedicated. He goes on to tell him that the Christian ruler nevertheless must not lay aside the sword on account of what has just been said, for in point of fact there are few such “Christians,” wherefore the sword was still “useful and necessary everywhere.” “The world cannot and will not do without” authority. Even with the sword you still remain “true to the gospel,” he tells this Christian Prince, and still hold fast to Christ’s Word, “so that you would gladly offer the other cheek to the smiter and give up your cloak after your coat, if the matter affected yourself or your cause.”[880] Every Christian likewise must comply with the command to relinquish his rights, “allow himself to be insulted and disgraced,” but in his neighbour’s cause he must insist upon what is just, even to having recourse to the sword of authority.[881]
In this way he fancies, as he says in the Dedication, that he is the first to instruct “the Princes and secular authorities to remain Christians with Christ as their Lord, and yet not to make mere counsels out of Christ’s commands”; but the “Sophists” “have made a liar of Christ and placed Him in the wrong in order that the Princes may be honoured. … Their poisonous error has made its way throughout the world, so that everyone looks upon Christ’s teaching as counsels for the perfect and not as obligatory commands, binding on all.”
Should the secular power exceed its limits and the rulers demand what is against conscience, then God is to be obeyed rather than man.[882] He now comes to the new Evangel. If the authorities require you “to believe this or the other,” “or order you to put away certain books, you must reply, … In this respect you are acting like tyrants; you are going too far and commanding where you have neither right nor power, etc. Should they thereupon seize your property and punish you for your disobedience, you should esteem yourself happy and thank God.”[883] In the County of Meissen, in Bavaria, and in the March, where the authorities required, under penalties, that his translation of the New Testament should be given up, he says, “the subjects are not to surrender a single leaflet, nor even a letter, if they do not wish to imperil their salvation, for whoever does such a thing, surrenders Christ into the hands of Herod.” They are, however, not to offer violent resistance, but to “suffer.”[884]
The Imperial Edicts issued against the innovations led him to speak more fully of the interference of the secular authorities on behalf of religious doctrine generally. “God,” he declares, “will permit none to rule over the soul but Himself alone. … Hence, when the secular power takes upon itself to make laws for the soul it is trespassing upon God’s domain and merely seducing and corrupting souls. We are determined to make this so plain that everyone can grasp it, and that our squires, Princes and bishops may see what fools they are when with laws and commandments they try to force the people to believe this or that.”[885] Such meddling of the authorities with matters which did not concern them was, so he says, due to the “commandments of men,” and was therefore utterly at variance with “God’s Word.” God would have “our faith founded only on His Divine Word,” but what the worldly authorities were after “was uncertain, or rather, certainly, displeasing [to God], because there was no clear Word of God in its favour.” “Such things are enjoined by the devil’s apostles, not by the Church, for the Church commands nothing save when she knows for certain that it is according to the Word of God. … As for them, they will find it a hard job to prove that the decrees of the Councils are the Word of God.”[886]
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.[887]
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.”[888]
“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.[889]
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