Life in the world, however, according to his theory has very different laws; here quite another order obtains, which is, often enough, quite the opposite to what man, as a Christian, recognises in his heart to be the true standard. As a Christian he must offer his cheek to the smiter; as a member of the civil order he may not do so, but, on the contrary, must everywhere vindicate his rights. Thus his Christianity, so long as he lives in the world, must perforce be reduced to a matter of inward feeling; it is constantly exposed to the severest tests, or, more accurately, constantly in the need of being explained away. The believer is faced by a twofold order of things, and the regulating of his moral conduct becomes a problem which can never be satisfactorily solved.
“Next to the doctrine of Justification there is hardly any other doctrine which Luther urges so frequently and so diligently as that of the inward character and nature of Christ’s kingdom, and the difference thus existing between it and the kingdom of the world, i.e. the domain of our natural life.”[211]
Let us listen to Luther’s utterances at various periods on the dualism in the moral life of the individual: “The twin kingdoms must be kept wide asunder: the spiritual where sin is punished and forgiven, and the secular where justice is demanded and dealt out. In God’s kingdom which He rules according to the Gospel there is no demanding of justice, but all is forgiveness, remission and bestowal, nor is there any anger, or punishment, but nothing save brotherly charity and service.”[212]—“No rights, anger, or punishment,” this certainly would have befitted the invisible, spiritual Church which Luther had originally planned to set up in place of the visible one.[213]
“Christ’s everlasting kingdom ... is to be an eternal spiritual kingdom in the hearts of men by the preaching of the Gospel and by the Holy Spirit.”[214] “For your own part, hold fast to the Gospel and to the Word of Christ so as to be ready to offer the other cheek to the smiter, to give your mantle as well as your coat whenever it is a question of yourself and your cause.”[215] It is a strict command, though at utter variance with the civil law, in which your neighbour also is greatly concerned. In so far, therefore, you must resist. “Thus you manage perfectly to satisfy at the same time both the Kingdom of God and that of the world, both the outward and the inward; you suffer evil and injustice and yet at the same time punish evil and injustice; you do not resist evil, and yet at the same time you resist it; for according to the one you look to yourself and to yours, and, according to the other, to your neighbour and to his rights. As regards yourself and yours, you act according to the Gospel and suffer injustice as a true Christian; as regards your neighbour and his rights, you act in accordance with charity and permit no injustice.”[216]
If, as is but natural, we ask, how Christ came so strictly to enjoin what was almost impossible, Luther replies that He gave His command only for Christians, and that real Christians were few in number: “In point of fact Christ is speaking only to His dear Christians [when He says, ‘that Christians must not go to law,’ etc.], and it is they alone who take it and carry it out; they make no mere Counsel of it as the Sophists do, but are so transformed by the Spirit that they do evil to no one and are ready willingly to suffer evil from anyone.” But the world is full of non-Christians and “them the Word does not concern at all.”[217] Worldlings must needs tread a very different way: “All who are not Christians belong to the kingdom of the world and are under the law.” Since they know not the command “Resist not evil,” “God has given them another government different from the Christian estate, and the Kingdom of God.” There ruleth coercion, severity, and, in a word, the Law, “seeing, that, amongst a thousand, there is barely one true Christian.” “If anyone wished to govern the world according to the Gospel ... dear heart, what would the result be! He would be loosening the leashes and chains of the wild and savage beasts, and turning them astray to bite and tear everybody.... Then the wicked would abuse the Christian freedom of the Gospel and work their own knavery.”[218]
Luther clung to the very end of his life to this congeries of contradictory theories, which he advocated in 1523, in his passionate aversion to the ancient doctrine of perfection. In 1539 or 1540 he put forth a declaration against the “Sophists” in defence of his theory of the “Counsels,” directed more particularly against the Sorbonne, which had insisted that the “consilia evangelica,” “were they regarded as precepts, would be too heavy a burden for religion.”[219] “They make out the Counsels,” he says, “i.e. the commandments of God, to be not necessary for eternal life and invite people to take idolatrous, nay, diabolical vows. To lower the Divine precepts to the level of counsels is a horrible, Satanic blasphemy.” As a Christian “you must rather forsake and sacrifice everything”; to this the first table of the Law (of Moses, the Law of the love of God) binds you, but, on account of the second table (the law of social life), you may and must preserve your own for the sake of your family. As a Christian, too, you must be willing to suffer at the hands of every man, “but, apart from your Christian profession, you must resist evil if you wish to be a good citizen of this world.”[220]
“Hence you see, O Christian brother,” he concludes, “how much you owe to the doctrine which has been revived in our day, as against a Pharisaical theology which leaves us nothing even of Moses and the Ten Commandments, and still less of Christ.”
“Such honour and glory have I by the grace of God—whether it be to the taste or not of the devil and his brood—that, since the days of the Apostles, no doctor, scribe, theologian or lawyer has confirmed, instructed and comforted the consciences of the secular Estates so well and lucidly as I have done by the peculiar grace of God. Of this I am confident. For neither St. Augustine nor St. Ambrose, who are the greatest authorities in this field, are here equal to me.... Such fame as this must be and remain known to God and to men even should they go raving mad over it.”[221]
It is true that his theories contain many an element of good and, had he not been able to appeal to this, he could never have spoken so feelingly on the subject.