Chapter XXXV: Luther’s Attitude Towards Society and Education (2)

“The secular and spiritual government” are most improperly confused, so he declares, when “spiritual or secular princes and lords seek to change and control the Word of God and to lay down what is to be taught or preached”; here he is referring to the non-Lutheran authorities. Quite a different thing is it “when David concerns himself with the divine or spiritual government,” and really restores God’s glory. Had David said: “My good people, act differently from what God has taught you,” then this would indeed have spelt a “confusion of the spiritual and temporal, of the divine and human government”—such as Luther’s opponents are now guilty of. But David, the servant of God and pattern of all pious princes and kings, because he acted otherwise, was adorned with such high and kingly virtues even in his temporal government that it must have been the work of God, i.e. His peculiar grace; but this same grace is with all pious princes in order that, under their sway and in spite of the hatred of the devil, the temporal rule and “God’s own Rule” may prosper. Supported by such grace David could say of the two authorities he combined: “I suffer neither ungodly men in the spiritual domain nor yet evildoers in the temporal.”[2237]

Thus, in the hands of a pious Evangelical prince, the co-existence of these two rules involves no disturbance of order. And they may all the more readily be put into the hand of one who serves God according to His “Word” seeing that there is in reality but a single power; according to Luther, the hierarchy having been destroyed, there was no one holding spiritual authority; as for the semblance of spiritual authority which the congregation had once possessed it had willingly resigned it into the hands of the Christian David on the princely throne. There is but one authority that embraces everything temporal and spiritual and that works in the two “governments” (read: spheres of life), i.e. in the temporal life of the subjects, which is founded on reason and earthly laws, and in the spiritual domain to which the Gospel lifts them up. In both orders man is admonished to obedience towards God by the pious ruler who regulates everything either himself or by means of the preachers.

Thus Luther’s conception of the State finally grows into a kind of theocracy.

The theocracy of the Israelites is therefore held up to the rulers in the example not only of David but also of the other pious Jewish kings. In the political sphere Old Testament imagery exercised far too great an influence on Luther and his arbitrary new creations. How widely different from the Jewish theocracy was it to see the Father of the country made the highest authority not merely on practical questions of Church government but even on differences concerning faith? The “absolute patriarch”[2238] at Luther’s express demand drives his negligent or reluctant subjects to hear the preachers; on him depends the introduction and use of the greater excommunication, should this weapon ever become necessary; he removes from their posts those professors of the theological or other faculties who oppose the ruling faith, just as he makes his authority felt on the preacher who forsakes the right path. He is, according to Luther, the chief guardian of the young and of all who need his protection, in order, that, where his subjects do not take thought for their salvation and act accordingly, he may “force them to do so, in the same way as he obliges them to give their services for the repair of bridges, roads and ways, or to render such other services as their country may require.”[2239]

On one occasion Luther points out, that in the past, the Pope of Rome had been all in all. Now it is the sovereign of the land, who, as God’s own Vicar, is all in all.

Thus we have here, writes Frank Ward in his “Darstellung der Ansichten Luthers vom Staat,” “almost the counterpart of the old ecclesiastical absolutism, seeing that all ecclesiastical functions and conditions so far as they belong to the outward domain are put under the State.”[2240] Instead of its being “almost the counterpart,” it would be better to say that it was an absolute caricature of the supposed ecclesiastical absolutism of the past. Ward, however, goes on to say that in the chapter in question he had only shown how, “Luther gave the State an independent dignity and position, and how he had enlarged and strengthened its claims.”

In direct contrast to those writers who see in Luther’s political theory the foundation of the modern State, is a recent statement of Heinrich Boehmer’s.

“Luther’s political and social views,” says this author,[2241] “are in every essential point quite mediæval, antiquated and unmodern. People speak of ‘Luther’s views’ or even of ‘Luther’s teaching on the State and society.’ But it would be better to refrain from using such terms which can only serve to arouse false expectations. As little as the reformer was familiar with the words state and society, so little did he know their meaning. For no State or society in the modern sense of the word existed at the time in central or northern Germany, but merely a large number of bodies somewhat resembling States, all of which, however, fell far short of the ideal of a State.” He goes on to explain, that, for this reason, Luther always speaks to the “authorities,” they being in his eyes the most potent factor in the political organisations he knew; yet, in determining their duties, “his mind moves on quite mediæval lines”; “in the matter of political theory he is far behind even Thomas of Aquin, for Thomas had, in the Italian cities, an example of a far more highly developed State, whilst in the school of Aristotle he had made acquaintance with a number of political ideas and views which had led him to a very thorough study of politics.” Boehmer points out that, according to Luther, the Natural Law upbears the outward order with which alone he was conversant—viz. the landed-aristocratic society which predominated at the time of the reformation—until it came to appear as almost a divine institution, any attempt to overthrow which amounted to a crime, “a view which indeed explains much of the success of Lutheranism, but which is anything but modern.”[2242]

Luther’s “Patriarchal theory,” according to H. Boehmer, had an even greater influence on the political conditions of Lutheran countries than his other theory of the rights of the nobility. The princes within the domain of the new church system entered eagerly into the theory of their supposed paternal rights and finally built it out into a quite insufferable absolutism. Such an undue growth of the secular power was the more to be feared seeing that any independent spiritual power, which might, as in the Middle Ages, have served as a counterweight, no longer existed, having been swallowed up in the authority of the prince. Everything had indeed been secularised, and, to the Lutheran ruler, as God’s own representative, it now was left to direct the religious and temporal concerns of the population on the lines laid down in the Bible.

“The Lutheran prince,” says Boehmer, “as father of the country, undertook to provide for his subjects in every department of life; his rule was absolute, though indeed patriarchal, an ideal of the State quite in accordance with Luther’s views.”[2243]

“Any separation or division of Church and State Luther neither recognised nor desired,” now that he had invested the Evangelical princes with the supreme episcopate.[2244]

The term “Zwangskultur,” often used of the absolutism obtaining in the Lutheran order of society, is not altogether incorrect, in spite of the protests of Protestant theologians. Other Protestant authors find a parallel between Luther’s view of the State and certain late mediæval ones; both, according to them, have been influenced by humanism, with its Cæsarean conception of unfreedom, and by theocratic absolutism.

Carl Sell notes how the Reformation, “in its own way, put new life into the mediæval idea of a new theocracy.” “How deeply the theocratical idea was rooted in the Protestant State-system may be seen from the time it took before the States would consent to surrender their religious character.”[2245]

After the Reformation, says G. Steinhausen, “the theological spirit more than ever laid hold of the world and mankind and fettered the ardent longing for freedom. Herein lies the chief harm wrought by the Reformation.”[2246]

“It was the Reformation,” so O. Gierke says, “that brought about the energetic revival of the theocratic ideal. In spite of all their differences Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli and Calvin agree in emphasising the Christian call, and, consequently, the divine right of the secular authority. Indeed, on the one hand by subordinating the Church more or less to the State, and on the other by making the State’s authority dependent on its fulfilling its religious duties, they give to the Pauline dictum ‘All authority comes from God’ a far wider scope than it had ever had before.”[2247]

_Luther’s Real Merit and his Claims_

If anyone ever really believed that the modern State was in any way embodied in Luther’s ideal or that he paved the way for it, the easiest way to disprove such an assumption would be to show that the most essential feature of the modern State is entirely wanting in the Lutheran, patriarchal one, viz. freedom and the political co-operation of the people, and, above all, the vital atmosphere of personal and corporate independence in religious matters.

In point of fact the most that can be argued is that Luther to some extent, though in an entirely negative way, paved the road for the modern conception of the State.

This he did by his relentless opposition to the Church, which had so long held sway. As early as the days of Boniface VIII attempts had been made to curtail her action in politics. The efforts of some of the Catholic sovereigns, who, without denying the inherent rights of the spiritual authority, laboured to establish State-Churches also tended in the same direction. Luther was, however, the first who sought to destroy all ecclesiastical authority, as a mere symbol of Antichrist. Hence, for those rulers who took his part, one of the chief obstacles that had withstood the growth of modern conditions was swept away. Nevertheless, wellnigh three hundred years, full of gloomy experiences, had to elapse before a way could be found out of the new labyrinth of despotism, indolence and disorder; and, all this while, the theocratic patriarch of Lutheranism almost invariably stood as an obstacle in the way of development.

Frank Ward may indeed assert, that it is possible “to appeal at least to the spirit of his theory of the State, if not to its every detail.”[2248] This, however, is only possible if by “its spirit” we understand not what was new but the old, wholesome, traditional elements which Luther retained, i.e. the political ideas handed down by antiquity and the Christian philosophy of the past, on which he so skilfully impressed his own drastic touch. To these olden elements Luther was, however, scarcely fair.

According to what he says and reiterates there had devolved on him alone the incredibly onerous task of finding a way out of the gruesome darkness into which the relations between prince and hierarchy, State and Church, spiritual and temporal order had been plunged in the past: “This is how things stood then. No one had heard or taught, nor did anyone know anything concerning the secular authority, whence it came, what its office or work was, or how it should serve God. The most learned men—I will not name them—looked upon the secular power as a heathen, human and ungodly thing, as a state dangerous to salvation.... In short princes and lords, even such as wished to be pious, regarded their station and office as of no account.... Thus the Pope and the clergy were at that time all in all, over all and in all, like a very god in the world, and the secular power lay unknown and uncared for in the darkness.”[2249]

Yet he himself had abased the authorities by reducing them in his writing of 1523 to the position of “jailers and hangmen,” working in a domain foreign to all that was spiritual.[2250] This, of course, was at a time when he had not as yet found patrons amongst the rulers as he was to do later. According to him, those who wielded the secular power, i.e. the princes, were no Christians. In 1522 he complains of the princes to whom he had appealed in vain: “Now they let everything go and one stands in the way of the other. Some even help and further the cause of Antichrist. They are at loggerheads and do not show themselves at all willing to help matters on.”[2251] Thus, according to him, Christ is left to Himself; but “He is the Lord of life and death.... Together with Him we too shall conquer and despise even the princes.”[2252] “God Himself will shortly make an end of Popery by His Word.... A new Church will arise but not by the doing of the princes but of those in whom the Word of God has really taken root.”[2253] Luther then wished, as we have already shown, to bring about the establishment of a Congregational Church; later on he even dreamed of assembling together only the true believers. As, however, the Congregational Churches did not thrive and as it proved impossible to carry out the scheme of a Church apart, he allowed the State to intervene, and, with its help, there came the National Church; this soon grew into a State-Church with the sovereign at its head.

Luther still remained, however, the great teacher. He continued to vaunt his ambiguous “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt.” In 1529 he even related how Duke Frederick had caused this writing to be copied and “specially bound; he was very fond of it because it showed him what his position was.”[2254] In 1533, looking back on the whole of his writings concerning the authorities he says: “In Popery such views of the secular power lay under the bench”; “since the time of the Apostles no doctor or scribe” has instructed the worldly estates so “well and outspokenly” as he, not even “Ambrose and Augustine.”[2255]

We may here recall the sober and perfectly true remark of Fr. v. Bezold. Luther may have plumed himself on having been the first to revive a right understanding of and respect for the secular authority, but that “the indefensibility of this and similar claims has long since been demonstrated.”[2256]

Luther’s error is evident, though unfortunately not to all, as we can convince ourselves by reading the eulogies of Luther which are still so common under the pen of Protestant writers; for instance, that Luther had “deepened Augustine’s view of the State”; that he was ever moving forward “in a straight line,” expanding and perfecting the knowledge already acquired; and that even in his “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt” “he was already at his best,” etc.

It may, therefore, be all the more useful to look a little more closely into one side of the present subject which has not yet been dealt with but which leads to interesting disclosures, viz. into the question of the various circumstances, some outward, some inward and personal, which led Luther to evolve his theory of the patriarchal, absolutist State. Here the Visitation of 1527-28 stands out as a milestone on the road of his development.

_Other Factors which assisted in the Establishment of the State-Church_

It was a common phenomenon in all the earlier struggles against the ecclesiastical hierarchy for the separatists to seek for support and assistance from the secular power and the State. From the time of the earliest controversies in the Church this tendency had been noticed among those who broke away. Luther too, from the time of his first public rupture, had cast his eyes on the secular power; nay, even earlier, in his Commentary on Romans, he betrays a tendency to put the secular before the spiritual.[2257]

To these ideas he gave full play in the call to reform the Church which he addressed “To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation.”

For the next few years, however, the ideas are less to the fore. Luther was very well aware that a quiet and gradual procedure would appeal far more to the then Elector, Frederick the Wise, than any urging on of the innovations at high pressure and with State interference. The Elector was in fact so averse to taking any strong measures, that on the contrary he frequently impressed on the Wittenberg leaders the need there was for caution.

Matters assumed another aspect, when, in 1525, there came a change of ruler. The Elector Johann of Saxony was a zealous friend of Luther’s and soon became the real patron of Lutheranism. His attitude towards the innovations, taken with Luther’s new tendencies, constituted a prime factor in the rise of a State-governed Church.

Another factor was the condition of the Lutheran congregations which had so far sprung up. They were scattered and devoid of organisation. Not seldom they bore within them seeds of dissension born as they had been out of quarrels within the parishes, and maintained for the most part only by the violent action of a majority of the council. The petty rulers naturally sought to link themselves up with the greater powers so as to maintain both the ecclesiastical innovations and their newly acquired rights. The sovereign was a pillar of strength on whom they leaned, when in doubt, when it was a question of defending the preachers they had appointed, of removing persons they regarded with disfavour, or of allaying disputes amongst the burghers.

To all this, however, must be added a further circumstance which contributed to bring about the State supremacy of a later date, viz., the corruption of many of the newly formed congregations, a corruption which urgently called for a strong hand and adequate means of coercion. “When, after the Peasant War,” writes Carl Müller, “the dreadful decline in things ecclesiastical made itself felt, the parsonages and schools threatening to fall into ruins and the agricultural population to relapse into savagery, the time arrived for the rulers of the land to come into greater prominence. It was now no longer a question of individual congregations but rather of the whole country, and above all of the rising generation.”[2258]

The intervention of the prince subsequent to the victory over the peasants in 1525 also greatly promoted the increased devotion with which men of influence, Luther included, attached themselves to the authority of the ruler as a bulwark against revolution. The arrogance of the country folk had to be broken by strengthening the power of the sovereign; this Luther repeated so often and so loudly that his foes began to call him a footlicker of the princes.

_Significance of the Visitation and Inquisition held in the Saxon Electorate_

The decisive importance, for the inward development of the new Church system and for Luther’s position, of the Visitation of the churches of the Saxon Electorate held in 1528 has already been pointed out cursorily.[2259] The Visitation brought to a head a growth which had long been in process. The princely supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs which then came about and was formally sanctioned in Saxony became, with Luther’s consent, which was partly given freely, partly wrung from him, something permanent in the birthplace of the new Church, the Visitations continuing to be carried out in the same way by the prince of the land. Saxony provided a model which was gradually followed in other districts where Lutheranism prevailed, while the then tendency to strengthen the reigning houses so as to enable them to hold their own against Emperor and Empire also exercised a powerful influence.

The Electoral Visitation which Luther had counselled and to which he most zealously lent his help, had for its aim, according to his own words, which we must take in their most literal sense, “the constituting of the churches” because “everything is now so mangled.”[2260] So much did he expect from it that he even expressed the hope that it would clear up for the future the whole problem of the new “Church” and its organisation, which, strange to say, he had never seen fit to think out theoretically. As a matter of fact it was “cleared up,” and that by the very programme for the Visitation issued by the Court. What was to be instituted was to be neither a Church apart, nor a number of free Congregational Churches, nor a great independent National Church, but a State Establishment, a compulsory Church in fact, though calling itself a National Church upheld by the charity of the State.[2261]

We have the programme of the Visitation in the three documents which follow in chronological order, the “Instructions” for the Visitors themselves issued by the Elector on June 16, 1527,[2262] the “Instructions of the Visitors addressed to the ministers of the Saxon Electorate” and the Preface to the same which Luther composed, both of which appeared in print together in March, 1528.[2263]

It can scarcely be doubted that Luther had a hand in the drafting of the Electoral Instructions, which form a sort of Magna Charta of princely supremacy in Church matters. All his previous written communications with the Court had been tending towards this end. In his earliest efforts to bring about the Visitation he had told the ruler that it pertained to his “office” to see that the Evangelical workers were remunerated, that, into his hands “as the supreme head” had fallen “all the monasteries and foundations” and, with them, the “duty and obligation of seeing into a matter in which no one else could or had a right to interfere.” “Not God’s command alone but our own needs require that some step should here be taken.” Thus he demands that the prince, by virtue of his own authority as “one appointed by God for the matter and empowered to act,” should nominate four persons as Visitors, who by his “orders should arrange for the erection and support of schools and parsonages where this was wanted”; of these persons, two were to attend to the material needs, and two who had had a theological training were to examine into the doctrine, preaching and performance of spiritual duties.[2264]

Such were the “principles which were eventually carried into practice. For ages after, the Lutheran sovereigns asserted their right to draw up rules concerning the doctrine and constitution of their National Churches, and, to this end, not only laid claim to the old ecclesiastical revenues but also to the right to levy special taxes on their subjects.”[2265]

Luther was moved to take up his new standpoint not merely by the needs of the day but also by pious Lutherans, such as Nicholas Hausmann, the pastor of Zwickau, who by examples taken from the Bible had pointed out to the Elector himself what his rights and duties were in this field;[2266] an even stronger influence was, maybe, exerted on him by the lawyers of the Court, who were intent on making the most of the rights of the sovereign, especially by Chancellor Brück, their spokesman, with whom Luther was brought into closer contact when seeking to remedy the existing distress. He himself, as we shall see, hesitated a little about entering upon this new course. The supremacy of the prince nevertheless seemed inevitably called for by the secularisation of Church property, also for the appointment and payment of the pastors, for the removal of incapable preachers and those who excited the mob,—especially those of “fanatic” inclinations—and, lastly, for the final and violent uprooting of Catholic worship where it still lingered.

A Visitation was begun in the Electorate in Feb., 1527, by a very characteristic commission appointed by the sovereign assisted by the University of Wittenberg; it was composed of the following members: the lawyer, Hieronymus Schurff, the two noblemen Hans von der Planitz and Asmus von Haubitz, and Melanchthon. The Electoral Instructions of June, 1527, referred to above were the result of previous experience, and had the approval of both Luther and Melanchthon. The practical experience already gained also proved useful in the drawing up of the “Unterricht der Visitatorn an die Pharhern” which was of a more theological and practical character. It is almost entirely the work of Melanchthon, though it was formally approved and accepted by Luther after some slight alterations. It was sent to Luther by the Elector, who had carefully gone into its details, and who directed him to look through it and also write an historical preface (“narration”) to it, though the work as a whole was to appear to come from the Court. In due time both the “Instructions” and the Preface were sent to the press by the Elector.

What had transpired of the contents of the “Unterricht” had already aroused considerable opposition within the Lutheran camp; it was displeasing to the zealots to find Melanchthon again returning half-way to the Catholic doctrine in the matter of penance, free-will and good works. They openly declared that official Lutheranism was “slinking back.” After its appearance further criticism was aroused among both Protestants and Catholics. Of the Catholic writers, Cochlæus ironically drew attention in his “_Lutherus septiceps_” to the withdrawal that had taken place from Luther’s former crass assertions. He also incidentally describes the strange appearance of the State Visitors: “Here comes the Visitor wearing a new kind of mitre, setting up a new form of Papacy, prescribing new laws for divine worship, and reviving what had long since fallen into disuse and dragging it forth into the light once more.”[2267] Joachim von der Heyden in his printed letter to Catherine Bora even declared, that, in the rules for the Visitation, Luther “had resumed the Imperial rights,” which he had “for a while discarded.” He is referring to certain of the rules dealing with Church property, which were to Luther’s personal interest.[2268]

The Elector’s Instruction to the Visitors themselves is, however, of even greater importance in the history of the rise of the Lutheran State Church.

“In this Instruction, not only do we meet everywhere with traces of Luther’s wishes,” but it also follows him “in applying the property of monasteries and pious foundations to the support of the churches and schools. In all this, true to Luther’s ideas, it sees the duty of the sovereign who constitutes the Christian authority.”[2269]

In this Instruction the attitude adopted by the Elector with regard to doctrine is, that, in view of the Word of God,[2270] he, the supreme lord, is not free to brook the practice of false worship and the teaching of false dogma in his lands. What the true doctrine really is, is taken for granted as known, though it is never expressly stated. On the other hand, in the Preface to the “Unterricht,” Luther tells, how, “now, by the unspeakable grace of God the Gospel has mercifully been brought back to us once more, or, rather, has dawned on us for the first time.”[2271] It was the duty of the sovereign, so the Instruction says, to abolish public scandals and hence to remove unworthy clerics. He must proclaim the Gospel to his subjects by means of those called to do so, and admonish them through the Visitors to take the same to heart. The congregations must, when necessary, assist in supporting the preachers. The Visitors had the right to insist in the sovereign’s name on the contributions called for by the law, and into their hands the Elector committed the management of the Church property.

The ruler must take steps, as the divinely appointed authority, in obedience to the Word of God, and in the interests of his country to abolish the remnants of Popish error by means of a Visitation. Those ministers who were papistically inclined were simply to be removed and all the preachers “who advocate, preach or hold any erroneous doctrine are to be told to quit our lands in all haste and also, that, should they return, they will be severely dealt with.” Whoever refuses to abide by the regulations of the sovereign in the dispensing of the sacraments, is to leave the Electorate. For, “though it is not our intention to prescribe to anyone what he is to hold or believe, yet we will not tolerate any sect or division in our principality in order to prevent harmful revolt and other mischief.”[2272]

Thus a formal “Inquisition” was introduced, even to the very name, which was to be undertaken by the Visitors in respect not merely of the clergy but even of the laity, attention being paid to the information laid before the Visitors by the officials and members of the nobility. Any layman who refused to desist from his “error” when summoned to do so was obliged within a certain term to sell out and leave the country “with a warning of being severely dealt with” similar to that addressed to clergymen.

Hence by means of this “Instruction” the foundation was laid for the State supremacy in religious matters. “Spalatin’s wish was now fulfilled,” says N. Paulus; “the sovereign had now put the ‘Christian bit’ in the mouth of all the clergy, and they could now preach nothing else than the Lutheran doctrine.”[2273] “Oh, what a noble work it would be,” Spalatin had written in 1525, when first proposing such a use of the ‘bit,’ “and what great good would result for the whole of Christendom.”[2274] “Spalatin’s pious wish,” drily remarks Th. Kolde, “was to be more thoroughly realised than probably he bargained for.”[2275]

Luther himself was pleased with the Instructions. He never ventured to bring forward any real objection against it, greatly as the document ran counter to his earlier principles; after the appearance of the “Unterricht” addressed to the pastors, headed by Luther’s remarkable preface, it was once more printed without any protest. Yet the Preface bears witness to his misgivings.

_Luther’s Misgivings in the Preface to the Visitors’ Directions_

The standpoint taken up by the Wittenberg Professor in his Preface to the “Unterricht” is so curious that it has even been said that a “manifest contradiction” exists between it and the Instructions which follow.[2276]

In it, albeit cautiously, he made certain reservations, which show that the absolutist system of Church government proposed by the Prince did not really appeal to him. It is clear he did not feel quite at ease about the Instructions, because of his former advocacy of the independence of the congregations in ecclesiastical matters, because of the future subserviency of Church to State and because the directions were at variance with honest convictions deeply rooted in his mind from the days of his youth. At the same time his misgivings are expressed only with the greatest restraint.

He says: “Although His Electoral Highness is not commanded to teach and to exercise a spiritual rule, yet it is his duty as the secular authority to insist that no dissensions, factions and revolt take place among his subjects”; for which reason too the Emperor Constantine had exhorted the Christians to unity in faith and doctrine. He adds: His Highness, the Prince, had settled on the Visitation at Luther’s request “out of Christian charity and for God’s sake, though this was not indeed required of him as a secular ruler.”

These, however, were mere Platonic excuses by which he sought to reassure himself, to explain the contradictions involved in his position, and, probably, to defeat those who looked askance at this Visitation ordained by the State.

It is easy to perceive from the language of the Preface that one of the writer’s objects was to meet the objections he feared from his own party. Among the ministers were some, who, it was to be apprehended, would “ungratefully and proudly despise” the action of the Prince; “madcaps, who out of utter malice cannot tolerate anything that is common and applies to all.” These he reminds of the sovereign’s powers of coercion by which they would be “sundered.” Seemingly he also tries to defend himself from the very natural charge of having introduced an incompetent authority into the Church Visitation; this he does by limiting the sovereign power as we just heard him do. The charge, that the Instructions of the Visitors were untrue to his former doctrine (he means more particularly that of good works) he answers by a rhetorical assertion to the contrary.

He also thinks it necessary to defend the measures aimed at those whose belief is different; this he does by a reference to the “unity of the spirit,” which sounds rather strange coming from him. To the Catholics who were obliged to quit their country since, for the sake of peace, conformity was required, Luther sends the following greeting: “Be careful to keep, as Paul teaches, the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace and charity Amen” (Eph. iv. 3).

When judging the Preface the fact must be taken into account that the “Unterricht” which Luther is launching on the public introduces amongst other things the office of the “super-attendents” (superintendents). In these directions coercion is defended in the strongest terms. Whoever preaches or teaches “against the Word of God,” what is “conducive to revolt against the authorities,” is to be “prohibited” from doing so by the Superintendent; if this be of no avail then the matter is to be “notified at once to the officer, in order that His Electoral Highness may take further steps.” All this simply on the authority of the sovereign.

Hence had Luther really wished, as has been asserted, to protest against the powers claimed by the sovereign and his Visitors this should have been very differently worded.

The passage regarding the “super-attendent” in itself shows that Luther did not regard the “Unterricht” merely as a spiritual guide, as has been recently asserted, or as representing that purely spiritual function which, according to him, is concerned only with the conscience, with doctrine and advice, and knows nothing of any law or command. This naturally follows from the above, even though the elastic Preface contains a qualifying statement, viz. that he could not allow the directions in the “Unterricht to be issued as a strict law lest we set up new Papal Decretals”; it is his intention to send them forth as a “history or account, and also as a testimony and confession of our faith.” In this, again, we can only see his desire to explain away the disagreeable expedient into which he had been forced by circumstances.

Since the beginning of the Church, he goes on, there had always been an episcopal Visitation though now this had ceased and “Christendom lay torn and distracted”; none of us (the Wittenberg Professors) having been called or definitely appointed to this, he had come “to play the part of conscience” and had moved the sovereign to take this step. In other words, no one on earth has the right to “constitute” new churches, not even the man who discovered the new Evangel; it was merely a venture on Luther’s part, when, owing to the urgency of the case, he called in the assistance of the secular power. Such a mental process, is, to say the least, highly involved.

It is sufficiently evident that this Preface, inscribed, so to speak, over the portals of the new State-governed Church, may lay claim to great psychological interest.

The interest deepens if we turn our attention to the demonological ideas Luther here brings into play. At that time he was suffering from the after-effects of his dreadful struggles with the “devil” (1527-28) and with his own conscience. That, here too, the devil might not be absent, he shows in the Preface how Satan had wrought all sorts of mischief amongst the Papists (this is Luther’s consolation) by neglect of the Visitations, and had set up nothing but “spiritual delusions and monk-calves.”[2277] The “idle, lazy bellies” had been forced to serve Satan. He gives this warning for the future: “The Devil has not grown good or devout this year, nor will he ever do so.” “Christ says in John viii. that the devil is a murderer.”[2278]

The words Luther uses when he characterises the intervention of the secular authorities in Church matters as merely a work of necessity or charity on the part of the chief member of the Church, are of psychological rather than of doctrinal importance.

What Luther says of the rights of the State authorities in Church affairs reveals how little his heart was in this abandonment of ecclesiastical authority to the secular arm. It shows the need he felt of concealing beneath fair words the road he had thus opened up to State-administration of the Church.[2279] The Saxon Elector is a “Christian member”; he is a “Christian brother” in the Church, who, as sovereign, must play his part; his intervention here appears as a service performed by the ruler towards the Christian community. “Our emergency Bishop,” such is the title Luther once bestows on Johann Frederick. The state of financial confusion amongst the Protestants is what chiefly demands, he says, that “His Electoral Highness, the embodiment of the secular authority, should look into and settle things.” On the other hand, it is not of his _secular_ authority, but simply of his authority, that Luther speaks in the writing he addressed to the Elector on Nov. 22, 1526, where he appeals to him to make an end of the material and spiritual mischief by establishing “schools, pulpits and parsonages.” He says, “Now that all spiritual order and restraint have come to an end in the principality and all the monasteries and institutions have fallen into the hands of Your Electoral Highness as the supreme head, this brings with it the duty and labour of regulating this matter, which no one else either can or ought to undertake.” “God has in this case called and empowered Your Electoral Highness to do this.”[2280] The supervision of the doctrine as well as of the personal conduct of the ministers, and not merely the providing for their material wants, all come within the ordinary province of the “supreme head.”

_Divergent Currents_

The psychological significance of Luther’s hesitation to sanction the ruler’s supremacy in church government lies in its affording us a fresh insight into the various drifts of his mind and temperament.

On the one hand, he helped to raise State-ecclesiasticism into the saddle, and, on the other, he would fain see it off again and looks at it with the unfriendliest of eyes. He not only gives us to understand in the most unmistakable manner that it is not his ideal, but, up to the very last, he says things of it which ring almost like an anathema; nor does he forbear to heap reproaches on the natural consequences of an institution of which notwithstanding he himself was the father. Only error, with its ambiguity and want of logic, combined with an obstinate will, could issue in such contradictions.

His earlier and truer recognition of the independence of the spiritual power refused to be entirely extinguished. It was the same here as with Luther’s doctrine of faith alone, of justification and good works; again and again the old, wholesome views break out from under the crust of the new errors and, all involuntarily, find expression in quite excellent moral admonitions. So too his former orthodox views concerning the dignity of the Bible are at variance with the liberties he takes with the Word of God, and, even according to Protestant divines, lead him to an ambiguous theory and to a practice full of contradictions.[2281] Yet again, his call to make use of armed force against the Emperor is contrary to what he had taught for long years regarding the unlawfulness of such resistance; the disquiet and perturbation, the consciousness of this causes him he seeks to drown beneath ever louder battle cries.[2282] We find something similar throughout the whole field of his psychology: everywhere we can detect gainstriving currents.

In the questions bearing on the rights of the State and the Church, his temperament, which was so susceptible to sudden changes, needed only some strong impulse from without in order to bring to light one or other of these opposing trends. One powerful stimulus of the sort was afforded by the attractive outlook of bettering the frightful condition of the Lutheran congregations in Saxony, making his disputed cause victorious, and at the same time getting rid of the remaining Papists. By this alluring prospect he was taken captive. It would seem to have led him to shut his eyes to the iron fetters which State supremacy in Church matters would forge about his Church system not merely in Saxony but far beyond its borders. When, afterwards, he would willingly have retraced his steps, it was already too late. He was condemned to make statements extolling freedom in spiritual matters, the futility of which was plain to himself, and which, therefore, Protestants should not take so seriously as some of them do.

It is not sufficiently realised how such opposing tendencies run side by side from the very outset of his career.

Even in his “An den christlichen Adel,” in spite of the violence with which he incites the nobility against the Church’s administration we can see that he wishes to set his new allies more against the alleged “robberies and exactions” of the Church and the abuses which he supposed to be beyond remedy, than against the Church as such. It is true, that, by his universal priesthood, he breaks down the walls which mark the field of her sway; God can speak “through the mouth of any pious man against the Pope”; “in principle every Christian has the right to summon a Council”;[2283] but, should the secular powers gather together the Council he desired, they would, according to him, do so simply at the will and command of the Christian congregation which he also takes into account and which he admits possesses a certain spiritual “sword” which exists side by side with the secular sword, though only for the benefit of souls. Thus the spiritual power still exists as a dream. Only a Christian ruler, a “brother Christian, brother priest and sharer in the same spirit-world” may demand that violent reformation for which Luther yearns.[2284]—Thus, even in this stormy work, the two contrary drifts are to some extent discernible.

With the same desire to retain intact some sort of spiritual order distinct from the secular, Luther here and elsewhere seeks to reserve to the Christian congregation the right of choosing their pastors; circumstances were, however, to prove too strong for him.

“Throughout Christendom things should be so ordered that every town chooses from amongst its congregation a learned and pious burgher, commits to him the office of pastor and sees that he is given enough for his upkeep.”[2285] The congregation is also to have the right to depose him should his preaching not turn out in accordance with the Word of God. What Luther has in mind is united action on the part of all the true believers. But here, again, he has perforce to lean rather on the authorities. For, in the congregation, we have first of all the Town-Council, which, even when only a minority of the burghers is in favour of the religious reform, receives from Luther a power which does not belong to it, viz. of seeing that the people it rules are supplied with the right preachers. Above the Council, moreover, stands the supreme authority, viz. the sovereign. The latter must naturally assist the Council in choosing good Evangelical preachers and must himself take steps when dissensions cause the Council to refuse to move. Luther, again, will do nothing in opposition to the Court; for instance, he will not allow any pastor to enter upon his office who is not a “_persona grata_” at the Court, even though he should have been duly called by the congregation.[2286] Every parish is indeed independent by divine right, but the prince also acts by divine right when, as protector and defender, he intervenes, regardless of the traditional rights of patron and warden, etc.[2287]

In Saxony, where the ruler was favourable to Lutheranism, his authority was indispensable for the establishment of the Church. On the other hand, where the conditions were less favourable to Luther, there, according to his “_De instituendis ministris_,” the principal work must devolve on the town councillors and the patrons as well as on the preachers appointed by them to the congregations;[2288] to these it falls to elect bishops, so that everything may be put on independent ecclesiastical lines.—Thus Luther was not so averse to changing both methods and principles.

The change in Luther’s views comes out most clearly in the leave he gives to the highest secular power to annul the choice made by the congregation. The instructions for the Visitation prescribed that, on the bare authority of the prince and regardless of the rights of the congregation, those pastors who taught what was erroneous or who had proved otherwise unsatisfactory were to be deposed and replaced by others. This held even of those who were strongly backed by their congregation. “In point of fact,” says Carl Müller, “this was practically to shift the responsibility from the congregation and its authorities to the sovereign. It is also clear, that, where there was a divergency of opinion concerning the orthodoxy of a preacher, the sovereign naturally had his own way.”[2289] But, even before this, Luther had refused to sanction the demand of the Erfurt burghers, viz. that the parishes should themselves appoint their pastors even against the wishes of the Town-Council; it was “seditious,” so he wrote in 1525, “that the parishes should seek to choose or dismiss their pastors regardless of the Council.”[2290] Here the Council happened to be on his side; where this was not the case, Luther was just as ready to set aside its rights in favour of those of the ruler.

In this wise the right of the congregation to elect its pastor, a right which he had once praised so highly, even in his own day was so whittled away as to become quite meaningless. Of the two tendencies which had been apparent in him from the first, one inclining towards the authorities and the other towards freedom of election, the former had won the day.

We already know that Luther inclined for a long while to the establishment of a Church-Apart or assembly of true believers. Yet, at the same time, he was working for a National Church, albeit he was convinced that such a Church would for the most part be composed of non-Christians. Eventually the latter was to hold the field owing to the force of outward circumstances.[2291]

He was in favour of a Church which should be entirely free, and at the same time of a confessional Church with binding dogmas. So strongly did he stand for freedom in all ecclesiastical matters that he not only refused to recognise the existence of any spiritual “authority” among his followers, but also declared no Pope, no angel, no man had the power to rob the faithful of this freedom or to impose anything on him.[2292] At the same time, however, he was in favour of that strict disciplinary government which finds its expression in the regulations for the Visitation.

According to Luther there is no real Canon Law. He refuses to recognise State and Church as two bodies which exist side by side.[2293] And yet he complains of the way in which the rights of the Church, i.e. of his Church, were being thwarted by the lawyers.[2294]

He wished a distinction to be drawn between the Prince and the Christian, and declared: “His princely authority has nothing to do with his Christianity”; and yet he himself united the spiritual and the secular power in the prince’s hands so closely that they were never afterwards to be wrenched apart. As Carl Müller truly remarks, we must not “press too much the term ‘emergency bishop for the time being’ which Luther applies to the secular ruler.”[2295]

True to one of his ruling tendencies, he based on the Bible the rights and duties of the authorities in every department of the spiritual sphere. “If the authorities do not wish it, then neither must you.” Nevertheless, almost in the same breath, he scoffs at the claims of the authorities when they did not happen to fall in with his wishes, or when they proved an obstacle to the expulsion of Popery: “Why pay attention to him [the Elector]? He has no right to command except in worldly things.”[2296]

He stood for the Consistories and promoted their establishment in spite of Spalatin’s objections; and yet, on the other hand, he opposed them, saying, that the Courts were after ruling the Churches as they pleased, and that Satan was bent on introducing the secular power into the Church.[2297] Hence, from about 1540, he attempted to set up Protestant bishops as in the case of Nicholas Amsdorf.[2298] The Consistories displeased him and made life unbearable. Still, because the ecclesiastical edifice he had erected could not do without them, he bridled his tongue; very different is the picture of Luther from that of the champions of the Church’s independence in the early days of Christianity, for instance, Ambrose or Chrysostom, who, regardless of self, staked all they had in the struggle against the oppressors of the Church. His habit of making the naughty lawyers of the Court the butt of his complaints is significant enough, for the really responsible party was the Court itself and the Elector in person, who used his newly acquired power to rule more autocratically in Church matters than any Pope had ever done.

_Conclusion_

The prince did not rule as a member of a religious commonwealth which also had rights of its own, but rather as one holding the highest powers of the episcopate; he nominated the pastors and provided for their support; he watched over the lives and behaviour of the clergy, and, at Luther’s instance, took proceedings against the false teachers and the remnants of Popery; he alone controlled the consistory which acted in his name; matrimonial cases were already being dealt with by his lawyers and the disposal and management of the property which had formerly belonged to the Church depended entirely on the Court. The right of the congregations “to appoint and dismiss preachers and to pronounce on doctrine” seemed now forgotten. If a layman dared to call a preacher to task the authorities were bound to take proceedings against him for disturbance of the public peace and order.

Not that Luther hesitated to complain or express his displeasure with the State-Church system whenever he found it in his way, or when he saw Catholic princes make use of his principles, or when he thought the cause of the new religion compromised. On such occasions we hear him bewailing: “The worldly rulers, the princes, kings and nobles throughout the land, not to speak of the magistrates in the villages, want to wield the sword of the Word and teach the pastors how and what they are to preach and how they must govern their Churches. But do you boldly say to such: You fool, you brainless dolt, look to your own calling and don’t try to preach; leave that to your pastor.” He declares in the same way: “The secular government does not extend over the conscience, though there are many crazy princes who seek to raise their power and influence over the welkin itself and even to rule consciences, also to settle what is to be believed or not; yet, the worldly power has only to do with that which reason grasps.”[2299]

He considered that the interests of his new Church were endangered when, in 1533, the Hessian theologians advocated the enforcement of the greater excommunication by the sovereign; he saw in this a real peril in the then state of things; he wrote: “I would not have the temporal authorities meddle in this office; they should let it be, in order that the real distinction between the two powers be upheld (‘_ut staret vera et certa distinctio utriusque potestatis_’).”[2300]

But where in the domain of Protestantism at that time, was there to be found any real ecclesiastical ruler who could act with “power”?

The only factor that kept his anger from breaking forth was his consciousness that he owed everything he had achieved to the ruler of the land. But “at heart he saw only too well,” remarks a Protestant Church-historian whom we have repeatedly quoted, “that the Princes, under the cloak of the Christian name which they did not deserve to bear, were solely intent on their own aggrandisement when they laid their hands on ecclesiastical authority. He also saw that he himself, in his ‘Unterricht,’ was to blame for this.”[2301] Hence it is all the stranger to hear Luther declaring when at odds with the officials, that they must never tire of “insisting, impressing, urging and driving home the distinction between the secular and the spiritual rule ... for the troublesome devil will not cease cooking and brewing up the two kingdoms together.” And yet we have heard him say that the two should form “one cake.”[2302]

Concerning his attitude towards the authorities some recent theologians of his own camp have expressed themselves very differently from what might have been expected:

“Thus, with Luther, the end tallies with the beginning,” they write; “everything has been thought out clearly and is in perfect agreement.”