Other fine sayings of Luther’s on this subject and on the duties he assigns to the rulers are instanced in plenty.
The ruler “holds the place of a father, only that his sway is more extensive, for he is not merely the father of one family, as it were, but of as many as there are inhabitants, citizens or subjects in his country.... And because they bear this name and title and look upon it as in all honour their greatest treasure, it is our duty to respect them and regard them as our dearest, most precious possession on earth.”[2196] Luther insisted in the strongest terms on the duty of obedience, more particularly after his experiences during the Peasant War. He emphasises very strongly, in opposition to the fanatics, that the secular Courts must rule and their authority be recognised, and also that the oath must be taken when required.
He even tells the rebels: “God would rather suffer the rulers who do what is wrong than the mob whose cause is just. The reason is that when Master Omnes wields the sword and makes war on the pretence that he is in the right, things fare badly. For a Prince, if he is to remain a Prince, cannot well chop off the heads of all, though he may act unjustly and cut off the heads of some.” For he must needs retain some about him, continues Luther with a touch of humour; but when the mob is in revolt then “off go all the heads.”[2197] “Even where a ruler has pledged himself to govern his subjects in accordance with a constitution—‘according to prearranged articles’—Luther will not admit that it is lawful to deprive him of his authority should he disregard his oath.... No one has the right or the command from God to enforce a penalty in the case of the authorities.”[2198] But things ought not to reach such a pass in the case of the prince’s government. Obedience should make everything smooth for him. He cherishes and provides for all, as many as he has subjects, and may thus be called the father of them all, just as in old days the heathen called their pious rulers the fathers and saviours of the country.[2199]
These ideas are not, however, peculiar to Luther. They were current long before his time and had been discussed from every point of view by Christian writers who, in turn, had borrowed them from antiquity.
In all this, which, furthermore, Luther never summed up in a theory, all that is new is his original and forcible manner of putting forward his ideas. “It is hardly possible to argue,” says Frank G. Ward, one of the latest Protestant writers in this field, “that his view of the duty of the State contained anything very new.... The opinion that the State had an educational duty was held even in classical antiquity.”[2200] If it was held in Pagan times, still more so was this the case in the Christian Middle Ages. It is to classical antiquity that we just heard Luther appeal when he referred to the “pater patriæ.” He had become acquainted in the Catholic schools with the ideas of antiquity purified by Christian philosophy.
Still, there is much that is really new in Luther’s views on the State and the rulers which does not come out in the passage quoted above; what is new, however, far from being applauded by modern Protestant judges, is often reprehended by them.
As the accounts we had to give elsewhere were already so full it will not be necessary again to go into details; it is, however, worth while again to emphasise the conclusions already arrived at by calling attention to some data not as yet taken into consideration.
In the first place one thing that was new was the energetic application made by Luther in his earlier years of his peculiar principle of the complete separation of world and Church. The State, or, rather, ordered society (for there was as yet no political State in the modern sense), was consequently de-Christianised by him, at least in principle, at least if we ignore the change which soon took place in Luther himself (see below, p. 576 f.). The proof of this de-Christianisation is found in his own statements. In his writing of 1523, “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt,” he expressly told the rulers of the land that they had no concern with good people and “that it was not their business to make them pious,” but that they were only there to rule a world estranged from God, and to maintain order by force when the peace was disturbed or men suffered injustice. Amongst real Christians there would, according to Luther, be no secular rulers.[2201] Even when Luther, in this tract of which he thought so highly, is instructing a pious Christian ruler on his duties, he has nothing to say of his duty to protect and further the Church, though in earlier days all admonitions to the princes had insisted mainly on this.
His view of the two powers at work in the social order was new, particularly as regards the spiritual sphere and the position of those holding authority in the Church. The believing Christians in Luther’s eyes formed merely a union of souls,[2202] without any hierarchy or a jot of spiritual authority or power; there is in fact only one power on earth qualified to issue regulations, viz. the secular power; the combination of the two powers, which had formed the basis of public order previously, was thrown over, any spiritual ruler being out of place where all the faithful were priests. There is but a “ministry” of the word, conferred by election of the faithful, and its one duty is to bring the Gospel home to souls; it knows nothing of law, vengeance or punishment.[2203] The ministry of the Word must indeed stand, but is by no means a supervising body, in spite of the “neo-Lutheran conception of the office,” as some Protestant theologians of the present day disapprovingly call it.