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.”[899] 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.[900] “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.”[901]—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.[902]—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.”[903]
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.”[904] “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.”[905] “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.”[906]
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?”[907] 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.”[908]
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.[909] 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.”[910]
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,”[911] 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.[912]
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.”[913] The change in his views concerning the treatment of sectarians and heretics will, however, be considered elsewhere.[914]
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.”[915]—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.”[916] At the outset he persisted in dissuading Princes favourable to his cause from armed resistance to the Emperor.
His earlier unwillingness, however, only contrasts the more strangely with his later attitude, particularly after the Diet of Augsburg, when his position had become stronger and when danger appeared to threaten the new Evangel from the Imperial power, even though all the Emperor’s steps were merely in accordance with the ancient laws of the Empire. Addressing the protesting Princes, he tells them they must act as so many Constantines in defence of their cause, and not wince at bloodshed in order to protect the Evangel against the furious, soul-destroying attacks of the new Licinii. His change of front in thus inciting to rebellion he covered, by declaring he was most ready to render to Cæsar the things that were Cæsar’s, but that when the Emperor forbade “what God in His Word [according to Luther’s interpretation] had taught and commanded,”