The argument with which Luther conceals his selfish aim of securing new fields for his own religious system, and veils the real motive of his struggle against Popery, is deserving of special attention in spite of all its frivolity.
According to Luther’s new modification of his views each locality was to have but one form of worship. Any divergency in preaching or worship must always sow the seeds of dissension, revolt and mob-law; the authorities ought not to permit such a state of things if they valued the preservation of order; so as to insure uniformity of preaching and worship dissenting preachers must be removed. It was for this reason that the inhabitants of Nuremberg had “silenced their monks and shut up their monasteries.”[2223] In this way, encouraged by the wisdom of a “prudent” town-council, which did not look beyond the city walls, Luther came to make his notorious request to his sovereign, viz. that Catholics who remained true to their faith should be banished from the country; for “madcaps,” who refuse to take the proposed arrangement in good part and in the spirit of Christian charity, are not to be suffered among Christians but must be swept away like “chaff from the threshing floor.”[2224] As though the secular power had not even then ample means at its disposal for checking or punishing any real disturbance of the peace on the part of a congregation. At the present day we can afford to smile at the strange reason assigned for measures so far-reaching against innocent citizens of the State; the assertion that difference of worship gives rise to unendurable discord sounds ridiculous to one used to the principles of liberty paramount in the civilised States of to-day. At any rate, this dictum did not make of Luther the founder of the modern State.
In strange contrast with the modern ideas of justice is the excuse he brings forward to vindicate the violent conversion to Protestantism so often practised by the magistrates or petty rulers in their own territories. “What is done by the regular authorities is not to be regarded as revolt.”[2225] Is it really a fact that subversion and violence cease to be wrong when practised by the regular authorities? The modern State—in theory at any rate—recognises no such principle.
It must be added, that both Luther and the princes devoted to him were fond of declaring that the really Christian rulers were bound to put an end to insults and blasphemies against God, regardless of any disturbance of civil life which might ensue. Luther made a beginning by exhorting the sovereign and the congregation to abolish the Mass at Wittenberg which, like Catholic worship in general, was a perpetual blasphemy of God. “The regular authorities” must rise up against “such blasphemy.” The scandal given being public, no indulgence was to be shown by Christians.[2226] Eventually every false doctrine was accounted a public scandal, i.e. every opinion expressed in writings or sermons which deviated from the true Evangel. “It is the duty” of the authorities, he says, “to punish public blasphemers ... and in the same way they should punish, or at least not brook, those who teach that Christ did not die for our sins, but that each one must make satisfaction for himself.”[2227] This, according to him, was notoriously the teaching of the Catholics.
But if the Papists and the Lutherans as they are called, “preach against each other in a parish, town or district” and neither party will yield, “then let the authorities step in and try the case, and whichever party does not agree with Scripture, let him be ordered to hold his tongue.”[2228] Thus the official delegated by the prince—where the prince himself was loath to take the chair—is to decide which is the true meaning of the Bible, and which party really conforms to it.
How opposed this was to the ground principles of the modern State it is scarcely necessary to point out here. The freedom postulated by the latter was absolutely unknown to Luther; had his mind ever risen to such heights he would never have proposed the farcical Bible examination to be held by the authorities.
The relation between such demands as these and Luther’s own former attitude has not escaped the censure of Protestant writers.
“Luther here contradicts himself,” remarks Drews;[2229] “as late as 1524 he had said that men must be allowed to disagree, and a year later that the authorities have no right to prevent every man from ‘teaching and believing whatever he wished, whether it be Gospel or lie’; it was sufficient if they checked the preaching of rebellion and any disturbance of the peace.”[2230]
The Elector Johann Frederick of Saxony adopted the view that uniformity of doctrine was called for. He would, so he declared, “recognise or tolerate no sects or divisions in his lands or principalities,” in order the better “to prevent harmful revolt and other unrighteousness.” But at the same time he assured his subjects that it was not his intention to “prescribe to anyone what he should hold or believe.”[2231]