Among the thoughts that chiefly disturbed his conscience was, as he himself repeatedly admits, that of having rent asunder the great Church. How can you justify your revolt against the one great Church of antiquity, the heir to the promises, so the inner voices said to him as he himself relates: “The words ‘sancta ecclesia’ affright a man. They rise up and say: ‘Preach and act as you like and can, the ‘ecclesia christiana’ is still here. Here is the bark of Peter, it may be tossed about on the waves, but perish it will not!…’ What was I to do? And how was I to comfort myself?… And yet I had to do it [i.e. preach against this Church] as here [John viii. 28] the Lord Christ also does and preaches against those who in name are God’s Kingdom and God’s priesthood.”[1194]
Elsewhere he admits: “What am I doing in preaching against such [representatives of the olden Church], like a pupil against his masters? Thoughts such as these storm in upon me: Now I see that I am in the wrong; oh, that I had never begun, never preached a single word! For who is allowed to set himself up against the Church?… It is hard to persist and to preach against such a Ban.”[1195]—And yet, in his defiant spirit, he does persist: “This hits one smartly in the face, as has often happened to me … yet the One Man, my Beloved Lord and Healer Jesus Christ, is more to me than all the holiest people on earth.” Since he thinks it is His Evangel he is defending, he is able, though only at great costs, “to rise above the cry of ‘Church, Church,’” though he has to admit that, “this troubles me greatly,” and “it is truly a hard thing … to leave the Church herself and not to believe or trust her doctrine any more.”[1196]
It was no real parallel when Luther, in order to justify the State Church, appealed to the conditions in the Middle Ages where the rulers had a share in Church matters,[1197] for if then the princes had intervened in Church matters their action, at least in principle, was always subordinate to the ecclesiastical authority which kept the power in its own hands, and concerned moreover only those outward things in which the Church was thankful for their assistance: The two co-ordinate powers, the secular and the spiritual, helped one another mutually—such at least was the ideal of world-government in those days,—acting in Christian agreement in the service of God and for the general welfare of mankind. Now, however, that the olden spiritual authority had been either completely paralysed or reduced to the shadow of its former self, Luther undertook to replace it by the State, and thus the Church ceased to be any longer a co-ordinate power.
Though the Wittenberg theologians insisted that to them belonged the care of souls and this alone, still the limits between this domain and that of the State became everywhere confused when once the new system had begun to work. Owing to the friction this caused, Luther, in the course of time, came to emphasise merely the duty of the authorities to arrange by law for the establishment of “schools and pulpits,” and to “allow us divergency in preaching or morals.”[1198] Otherwise he left those in power, the high-handed nobles and officials, to do as they pleased, or, else, he lashed them ineffectually with violent and abusive language. In 1586 he declared, speaking of the marriage questions: “The peasants and the rude people who seek nothing but the freedom of the flesh, and likewise the lawyers who are always bent on thwarting our decisions, have wearied me so greatly that I have thrown aside the marriage cases and written to some that they may do as they please in the name of all the devils; let the dead bury their dead.”[1199] It was chiefly in the matter of these matrimonial cases that he came into conflict with the Court lawyers, e.g. as to the validity of the secret marriage contracts. It was in this connection that he declared that, “in his Church,” which was God’s own institution, he would retain in his own hands the decision on such matters by virtue of his ecclesiastical office. In other strong remonstrances wrung from him by the arbitrary interference of the State officials and the nobles in Church matters, he sometimes spoke so strongly of the inalienable rights of the Church that one might well think that he regarded the Church as essentially an independent institution with an organisation and spiritual authority of its own.[1200] More usually, however, he simply sighs. When the Court of Dresden interfered with his plans for the improvement of Church discipline he wrote resignedly: “Satan is still Satan. Under the Pope he pushed the Church into the world’s sphere and now, in our day, he seeks to bring the State system into the Church.”[1201]
Without reverting to the subject of the State and Established Church already dealt with (vol. v., 568 ff.) we may refer to the close connection between Luther’s theology on the Church and the development which was its outcome. His theology, from the outset, had aimed at undermining the authority of the Church, while at the same time enlarging the sphere of the secular power.
As early as 1520 in his work addressed to the German nobility he had praised the secular lords as “priests like us, equal in all things”; “they were to give free scope to the office and work which they have from God, wherever it is needed or useful.” Of the clergy, without considering their authority in ecclesiastical matters, he writes: “The priests, bishops or popes must deal with the Word of God and the sacraments, this is their work and office.”[1202]
“The direction of the outward business of the Church, i.e. what we now term Church government,” so Sehling, the Protestant Professor of Canon Law, says, “Luther in his writing to the German nobility, and ever after, attributes directly to the worldly authorities.… Nor, above all, does he claim for the Church any power of legislating. The Reformed Canon Law, so far as it was reorganised legislatively, was based entirely on the code of the State.”[1203]
Luther, in fact, recognised no other authority throughout the whole of the social order than that of the State; nowhere excepting amongst the secular authorities was there, according to him, any real power; there is on earth only one power, viz. the secular. “Worldly superiors, by virtue of their calling, maintain order and rule according to law and equity; as for the Church she has, by God’s ordinance, her common ministry of Word and Sacrament.”[1204] “The power of the Churches,” says the Schwabach Visitation Convention of 1528, “only extends to the choosing of ministers and the enforcing of the Christian Ban”; besides this they may also provide for the care of the poor; “all other power belongs either to Christ in heaven or to the secular authorities on earth.”[1205]