The charge he brings against earlier times, viz. that, owing to the too great number of clergy and religious a premium had been placed on idleness,[2175] is perhaps not devoid of a grain of truth; nor was his complaint that the indolence of so many people who lived by the Church endangered the welfare of the State and was opposed to the interests of the community altogether unjustified.[2176] The strongly worded passages where Luther speaks in favour of work and exhorts the authorities to cultivate and promote labour were quite in place, though it is true they can be matched by a whole row of equally vigorous admonitions by Catholic writers, dating from the Middle Ages and from the years immediately preceding Luther’s day.[2177]
Owing to his having by his attacks on ecclesiastical institutions dried up many of the existing sources of charity there can be no doubt that indirectly he contributed to awaken those who were less well off to a sense of their duty to work for their own living. In this wise the sense of responsibility was aroused in the masses. The secular authorities were also obliged to intervene more frequently owing to the falling off in the support afforded by the Church to the needy and oppressed, particularly in cases where all the labour and exertion of the individual were insufficient to guarantee subsistence or legal protection. In so far therefore, viz. in regard of the growing needs of social life, it has been truly remarked that the religious revolution of the 16th century smoothed the way for the material conditions of modern society and new cultural problems; in this sense Luther assisted in bringing about the economic conditions of the present day. We shall say nothing here of the rise of the modern spirit with its rejection of authority and its principle of unrestrained intellectual freedom.
Luther also helped in a certain sense to set the worldly authorities on their own feet and to make them more independent. This was an outcome of his violent struggle against the influence previously exerted over the State by the olden Church, or to speak more accurately of his assault on the Church as such, albeit it was attended by the other eminently unfortunate results. In the course of history, according to the Divine plan, new and useful elements not seldom spring up from evil seed. Owing to a too close union of the two powers and the assumption of many worldly functions by the Church, the representatives of the latter were too often exposed in their work to a not unjustifiable criticism. The Church was charged with being inefficient in her management of outward business and this detracted from the respect due to her spiritual functions; unnecessary jealousy was aroused and social developments in themselves desirable were frequently retarded. Thus, though the storm let loose by Luther wrought great devastation, yet it is not to be regretted that since then many temporal forces now transferred from the Church to the State have been set to work with satisfactory results such as might otherwise not have been attained. In some places certainly they had come into operation long before this, but speaking generally, things in this respect were still in a backward state.
Important factors for judging of Luther’s social work are two ideas on which he laid great stress and which we have already discussed. One is the separation of the Church from the world, which, albeit, in very contradictory fashion, he attempted to carry out; the other is his plea that the Church, which he sought to divest of all legislative power, possessed no authority to make binding laws. What has been said already may here be summed up anew with a few more quotations to the point.
We have in the first place the separation of the spiritual and supernatural. Luther’s work did great harm in the sphere of the supernatural and, so far as his influence extended, alienated society from it.[2178] His doctrine, particularly concerning the state of man, grace and good works was of such a nature as in reality to withdraw society from the supernatural atmosphere, however much he might extol the “knowledge of the free grace of God in Christ,” which he claimed had been won by his exertions.
The detachment of the supernatural life expressed itself also in a systematic, jealous exclusion of any worldly meddling in the spiritual domain, for the rule of the Gospel must, according to Luther, be something quite distinct from the worldly rule. By his principles and his writings he materially contributed to the secularisation of society and the State. According to him Christ simply says without any reservation: “My kingdom is no business of the Roman Emperor.” The spiritual rule must be as far apart from the temporal rule “as heaven is from earth.”[2179]
“What is most characteristic of the kingdom of grace,” so writes E. Luthardt, one of the best-known Lutheran moralists, who, however, fails to point out its want of clearness, “is the order of grace, whilst what is most characteristic of the kingdom of the world and the world’s life is the order of law; they are quite different in kind nor do they run on the same lines but belong to entirely different worlds. To the one I belong as a Christian, to the other as a man; for we live at once in two different spheres of life, and are at the same time in heaven and on earth.” “Each one must keep within his own limits,” and “not make of the Gospel outward laws for life in the world, for Jesus gave His law only for Christians, not for the rest.”[2180]
Luthardt rightly appeals to Luther’s words: “This is what the Gospel teaches you: It has nothing to do with worldly things, but leaves them as God has already disposed them by means of the worldly authorities.” “The kingdom of Christ has nothing to do with outward things, but leaves them all unaltered to follow their own order.” “In God’s kingdom in which He rules through the Gospel there is no going to law, nor have we anything to do with law, but everything is summed up in forgiveness, remission and bestowing, and there is no anger or punishment, nothing but benevolence and service of our neighbour.” As to the temporal matters, “there the lawyers are free to help and advise how things are to be.” “If anyone were to try and rule the world according to the Gospel, just think, my good friend, what the result would be. He would break the chains and bonds that hold back the wild and savage beasts.”[2181]—It is true that he here altogether overlooks the fact that religion has, on the contrary, to help in governing the world by her moral laws, restraining the “wild and savage” elements by means of her laws, her authority and her means of grace; just as when speaking above of the two spheres of life in which man is placed he forgets that we are endowed with but one conscience and one responsibility, viz. that of the Christian, which is inseparable from man as he is at present constituted.
“Now, praise be to God, all the world knows,” says Luther, of his sundering of the two spheres of life, “with what diligence and pains I have laboured and still labour to distinguish between the two offices or rules, the temporal and the spiritual, and to keep them, apart; each one now is instructed as to his own work and kept to it, whereas in Popery it was all so entangled and in such confusion that no one kept within his own powers, dominion and rights.”[2182]