Things drifted, thanks to Luther’s own action, slowly but surely towards an entire control of the Church by the State. Luther knew of no better means of stimulating the Evangelical rulers to take action in ecclesiastical things than by setting up before them the example of King David.
He describes in 1534, in his exposition of Psalm ci. (c.),[2232] how, in order to exterminate false doctrine, David “made a visitation of the whole of his kingdom.” “He always checked any public inroads of heresy. For the devil never idles or sleeps, hence neither must the spiritual authorities be idle or slumber.” “Oh what a great number of false teachers, idolaters and heretics was he not obliged to expel, or in other ways stop their mouths.... The true teachers on the other hand he had everywhere sought out, promoted, called, appointed and commanded to preach the Word of God purely and simply.... He himself diligently instituted, ordered and appointed true teachers everywhere, himself writing Psalms in which he points out how they are to teach and praise God.” “David in this was a pattern and masterpiece to all pious kings and lords ... showing them how they must not allow wicked men to lead souls astray.”[2233] “I say again, let whoever can, be another David and follow his example, more particularly the princes and lords.”[2234] David, so he continues later, led “pious kings and princes rightly and in a Christian manner to the churches,” but he was also a “model in secular government,” which “can have its own rule apart from the kingdom of God”; to this all Popish princes should restrict themselves and not try to instruct Christ how to rule His Church and spiritual realm.[2235]
Hence all that he had once written quite generally of the separation of the kingdom of God with “its own rule” from the “worldly government” was in fact, as he now says more outspokenly, only to apply to the “false priestlings,” and their princes.
But when according to David’s example a Lutheran preacher “by virtue of his office,” or a Lutheran prince, demanded the suppression of the false teaching, this “spiritual rule is nothing more than a service offered to God’s own supremacy”; the Lutheran prince is not thereby intruding on the “spiritual or divine authority but remains humbly submissive to it and its servant.”
“For, when directed towards God and the service of His Sovereignty, everything must be equal and made to intermingle, whether it be termed spiritual or secular.” “Thus they must be united in the same obedience and kneaded together as it were in one cake.”[2236]—It is hardly possible to believe our eyes when we meet with such phrases coming from the same pen that had formerly so strongly championed the complete sundering of the spiritual from the temporal. Yet Luther even seeks to justify the contradiction on more serious grounds. When it was a case of the true Word of God and of the Evangel, then matters stood quite otherwise.
“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]