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]