Hartmann Grisar

LUTHER’S ATTITUDE TOWARDS SOCIETY AND EDUCATION

1. Historical Outlines for Judging of his Social Work

It would be beyond our present scope to examine in detail all the views advanced concerning Luther’s social and economic attitude. Recent research in social economics has already rectified many of these.

What the historian of sociology chiefly misses is any appreciation of Luther in the light of the theories and conditions prevailing at the close of the Middle Ages. It has been remarked quite rightly, that, from the way in which the matter is dealt with in Protestant Church-history and “practical theology,” it is perfectly clear that, hitherto, the Middle Ages have in many instances been altogether misjudged.[2165]

There is still much for historical research to do in this field. Neglect to study as they deserved whole centuries of our history, prolific though they were in great things, has avenged itself by the one-sided character of the prevalent views concerning them. In the case of many writers too much attention to the verdicts pronounced by Luther on every possible occasion against the Church of the past is what is chiefly responsible for their disinclination to pursue the matter further; they are too prone to regard things from the watch-tower of Lutheran theology. It is not so very long since hardly any paradox or calumny against the social “disorders” prevalent amongst the clergy and the monks, in family life and the commonwealth under Popery, was too monstrous, provided it had been uttered by the Wittenberg Professor, to be dished up again, though possibly under somewhat politer form, by the occupants of Protestant pulpits and chairs of theology.

Statements such as the following, taken word for word from recent works, which, following our habit, we shall refrain from naming, are based on the traditional assertions of controversy and on insufficient acquaintance with the Middle Ages.

“Luther accomplished something eminently positive when he put the State-idea on those lines which it was ultimately to follow in his own country.” For, “according to him, the duty of the State is the promotion of the general welfare.” “We have the fullest right to appeal to the spirit of his State policy, above all, because, in opposition to the mediÆval view, it conceded to the State an independent status.” “The State, according to him, was to put in practice in social life the principle of ‘serving our neighbour.’”

We often find all “political” as well as all “civil freedom” traced back to Luther. He it was, so we are told, who introduced, or laid the foundations for, the real mutual tolerance displayed by citizens in the State, just as he did for the principle of nationality, for scientific freedom, for the freedom for invention, and, finally, for the freedom of the Press.

He “laid constant stress on charity towards our neighbour in direct contrast to the individualism of the Middle Ages, when even almsgiving resolved itself ultimately into mere selfish interest, the giver living in hope of a heavenly reward.” “He proclaimed that: Mendicancy was to be done away with.... The number of the destitute, and their claim on public benevolence he reduced to a minimum. These principles are in direct contrast with the devout and indiscriminate almsgiving of the Middle Ages and paved the way for the modern poor-law system.”

“The sanctity of the home and the family had suffered severely under the influence of monasticism.” Luther had to “reorganise the methods of education in order to make, of the home and the family, institutions for the public welfare.” He became the “father of the modern National Schools.”

“In his plans for the maintenance and direction of civic affairs Luther once more brought into their own the ‘principles of social responsibility.’”

He set aside the mediÆval “contempt for material things and for labour as a means of production.” Luther performed a signal service to economics by restoring respect for work; for, “maybe, there was no phenomenon of mediÆval life which presented a greater obstacle to material happiness than laziness.” “Economic progress was impossible” where the theory prevailed, that “the contemplative life was of greater value than the active.” “Luther bestowed new dignity not only on work in general, but also on its every branch”; according to him “no work is degrading which serves the interests of mankind.”

He was the “guardian and promoter of the interests of society,” and the “importance of his influence is still more enhanced by the fact that he showed himself a conservative and guiding spirit in the midst of social disorder and confusion of ideas.”

If this holds good of the service he rendered to society as a whole, he was also within narrower limits the “reformer and restorer” of family life. His own marriage was “one of his greatest reforming acts, by which he confirmed his rehabilitation of the conjugal state, and, by his labours as a whole, he secured to marriage, and thus to the very foundation of family life, the prerogative of being a ‘divine institution.’” He brought the duties of the family into respect, whereas, formerly, “the Church, which permeated everything, had been the cause of their neglect.”

“It remains an historical truth that the greatness of the German people in politics, economics and intellectual life may be traced back to those divine powers which the Reformation set free by its recognition of the free grace of God in Christ.”

There are, however, other Protestant scholars, who are not theologians, who regard such praise of Luther’s social importance as either quite mistaken or at least greatly exaggerated; in their opinion Luther’s services lay rather in his work for religion, and on behalf of the knowledge of God and union with Him by faith.

L. Feuchtwanger, for instance, a representative sociologist, recently spoke in tones almost ironical of the view held “by most [Protestant] Church-historians,” who praise “the religion of Luther as having produced autonomous ethics, the modern State, a society that despises idleness, the German family, in short all that is great and good.” He is of opinion that such views call for “revision”; nor would such a revision, so he says, “detract from the eminent importance of the reformation.”[2166] We shall speak later on of the proofs he adduces to show the error of the “obstinate opinion,” as he terms it, “that Protestantism created the modern system of public charity,”[2167] and that Luther brought about the regeneration of benevolence.

E. Troeltsch, the Heidelberg theologian, says in “Die Bedeutung des Protestantismus fÜr die Entstehung der modernen Welt”: “As a matter of fact, the importance of Protestantism must not be one-sidedly exaggerated. The foundations of the modern world in the State, in society, in economics, learning and art were established in a great measure independently of Protestantism, partly as an outgrowth of the later Middle Ages, partly as the result of the Renaissance, particularly of the Renaissance as assimilated by Protestantism, partly—as in the case of the Catholic countries, Spain, Austria, Italy and especially France—after the rise of Protestantism and concurrently with it.” “With the principle of nationalism,” writes Troeltsch, “his [Luther’s] system of an established Church had no connection. The latter merely promoted the solidification and centralisation of the chief authorities, whereas the former is a product of the entirely modern democratic awakening of the masses and the romantic idea of a national spirit.” In another passage he says: “There can be no question of [Protestantism] having paved the way for the modern idea of freedom—of science, of thought, or of the press—nor of its having inspired the scholarship which it controlled with new aims, or led it to break new ground.”[2168]

There are even Protestants who are disposed to deny that Luther took any interest in the State and in public affairs. “It follows from Luther’s views of life,” writes Erich Brandenburg, the author of “Luthers Anschauung vom Staate und der Gesellschaft,” that a Christian neither can nor ought to care for the outbuilding of the existing order of the State and society. For “God has thrown us into the world and put us under the rule of the devil, so that here we have no paradise but look forward hourly to every kind of misfortune to life and limb, wife and child, goods and honour.’[2169]... By the fact of his birth the Christian [according to Luther] has been given a definite place.... To seek for a better one, or to wish to create an entirely different state of things would be to rebel against the Will of God. Far from its being the Christian’s duty to strive after an improvement in the order of the State or of society, any such striving would be really sinful.” “He [Luther] regards civil life as merely one aspect of the probation which he has to endure on earth”; in his eyes the struggle for political freedom simply implies an “unlawful devotion to earthly aims, an absence of trust in God, and an attempt to create a paradise on earth by our own strength.”[2170] Where tyranny prevails one is not even allowed to emigrate, so Luther insists, unless indeed the ruler will not suffer the Evangel, when it became lawful and advisable, to seek another home.[2171] Nowadays people have a different conception, so Brandenburg points out, of national greatness and political freedom.[2172]

Albert Kalthoff, a Bremen preacher, who belongs to the extreme left of the Protestant party, goes still further: “There is a considerable amount of conceit sticking to our Protestant churches, indeed the Reformation festival seems to afford it a fitting occasion for celebrating each year its orgy. What is not Protestantism supposed to have brought to the world? National freedom and prosperity, modern science and technicology, all this we hear described as the fruit of the tree of Protestant life; not long since I even read of a German professor who quite seriously ascribed the whole of our present-day civilisation to Luther.”[2173]

Luther’s favourable traits in respect of social conditions, his eloquent admonitions on family life and love of our neighbour deserve a high place. There is no call again to bring forward examples after all we have quoted elsewhere. Luther is even fond of including under the “neighbourly love” of which he so frequently speaks the whole of our social activity on behalf of our fellow men.[2174]

His struggle against voluntary celibacy and renunciation of the world, however ill advised, had at least one good result, viz. that it afforded him an opportunity to speak strongly on the duties of the home, which were so often neglected, on the importance of the humble, everyday tasks involved in matrimony and the training of children, on work at home and for the community, whether in a private or a public capacity. That plentiful children were a blessing, a principle which had always been recognised in the Christian world, he insisted upon emphatically in connection with his advocacy of marriage. The keeping of the fourth commandment, which had always been regarded as the corner-stone of society, was warmly emphasised by him as regards the relations both to parents and to other secular authorities. It would be hard to gainsay that his teaching has bequeathed to Protestantism a wealth of instructions on the cultivation of family affection and the maintenance of a well-ordered household. From the first it was beneficial to the social foundations of society, and its good influence has been apparent even down to our own times. Luther’s writings and sermons, as we soon shall see, also contain some excellent admonitions against usury as well as against begging; he preaches contentment with our lot as well as honest industry; he has also much to say of relief of the poor and education of the young either for the learned professions or for life in general. In the same way that he sought to interest the community more and more in the relief of the indigent—though by rather novel means, which it seemed to him might take the place of the help formerly afforded by the churches, monasteries and private charity—so also his appeals on behalf of the schools were addressed more to the congregation, the authorities and the State than had been customary in the days of the Church schools. The increased share now taken by these bodies in this work, if kept within reasonable bounds, might indeed turn out advantageous, though the results did not reach his expectations, and in fact did not show themselves until much later, and then were due to factors altogether independent of Protestantism.

It must also be pointed out to Luther’s credit that he at once vigorously withstood the communistic views which had begun to make their appearance even before his day, as soon as experience had opened his eyes to their dangers. He perceived the radical trend of the Anabaptists—which it is true was not without some affinity with his own doctrines. He came after a while to oppose in popular writings the extravagant social demands of the peasants, and, in spite of the crass exaggeration of his language, his tracts give many a useful hint for the improvement of existing conditions on Christian lines.

The charge he brings against earlier times, viz. that, owing to the too great number of clergy and religious a premium had been placed on idleness,[2175] is perhaps not devoid of a grain of truth; nor was his complaint that the indolence of so many people who lived by the Church endangered the welfare of the State and was opposed to the interests of the community altogether unjustified.[2176] The strongly worded passages where Luther speaks in favour of work and exhorts the authorities to cultivate and promote labour were quite in place, though it is true they can be matched by a whole row of equally vigorous admonitions by Catholic writers, dating from the Middle Ages and from the years immediately preceding Luther’s day.[2177]

Owing to his having by his attacks on ecclesiastical institutions dried up many of the existing sources of charity there can be no doubt that indirectly he contributed to awaken those who were less well off to a sense of their duty to work for their own living. In this wise the sense of responsibility was aroused in the masses. The secular authorities were also obliged to intervene more frequently owing to the falling off in the support afforded by the Church to the needy and oppressed, particularly in cases where all the labour and exertion of the individual were insufficient to guarantee subsistence or legal protection. In so far therefore, viz. in regard of the growing needs of social life, it has been truly remarked that the religious revolution of the 16th century smoothed the way for the material conditions of modern society and new cultural problems; in this sense Luther assisted in bringing about the economic conditions of the present day. We shall say nothing here of the rise of the modern spirit with its rejection of authority and its principle of unrestrained intellectual freedom.

Luther also helped in a certain sense to set the worldly authorities on their own feet and to make them more independent. This was an outcome of his violent struggle against the influence previously exerted over the State by the olden Church, or to speak more accurately of his assault on the Church as such, albeit it was attended by the other eminently unfortunate results. In the course of history, according to the Divine plan, new and useful elements not seldom spring up from evil seed. Owing to a too close union of the two powers and the assumption of many worldly functions by the Church, the representatives of the latter were too often exposed in their work to a not unjustifiable criticism. The Church was charged with being inefficient in her management of outward business and this detracted from the respect due to her spiritual functions; unnecessary jealousy was aroused and social developments in themselves desirable were frequently retarded. Thus, though the storm let loose by Luther wrought great devastation, yet it is not to be regretted that since then many temporal forces now transferred from the Church to the State have been set to work with satisfactory results such as might otherwise not have been attained. In some places certainly they had come into operation long before this, but speaking generally, things in this respect were still in a backward state.

Important factors for judging of Luther’s social work are two ideas on which he laid great stress and which we have already discussed. One is the separation of the Church from the world, which, albeit, in very contradictory fashion, he attempted to carry out; the other is his plea that the Church, which he sought to divest of all legislative power, possessed no authority to make binding laws. What has been said already may here be summed up anew with a few more quotations to the point.

We have in the first place the separation of the spiritual and supernatural. Luther’s work did great harm in the sphere of the supernatural and, so far as his influence extended, alienated society from it.[2178] His doctrine, particularly concerning the state of man, grace and good works was of such a nature as in reality to withdraw society from the supernatural atmosphere, however much he might extol the “knowledge of the free grace of God in Christ,” which he claimed had been won by his exertions.

The detachment of the supernatural life expressed itself also in a systematic, jealous exclusion of any worldly meddling in the spiritual domain, for the rule of the Gospel must, according to Luther, be something quite distinct from the worldly rule. By his principles and his writings he materially contributed to the secularisation of society and the State. According to him Christ simply says without any reservation: “My kingdom is no business of the Roman Emperor.” The spiritual rule must be as far apart from the temporal rule “as heaven is from earth.”[2179]

“What is most characteristic of the kingdom of grace,” so writes E. Luthardt, one of the best-known Lutheran moralists, who, however, fails to point out its want of clearness, “is the order of grace, whilst what is most characteristic of the kingdom of the world and the world’s life is the order of law; they are quite different in kind nor do they run on the same lines but belong to entirely different worlds. To the one I belong as a Christian, to the other as a man; for we live at once in two different spheres of life, and are at the same time in heaven and on earth.” “Each one must keep within his own limits,” and “not make of the Gospel outward laws for life in the world, for Jesus gave His law only for Christians, not for the rest.”[2180]

Luthardt rightly appeals to Luther’s words: “This is what the Gospel teaches you: It has nothing to do with worldly things, but leaves them as God has already disposed them by means of the worldly authorities.” “The kingdom of Christ has nothing to do with outward things, but leaves them all unaltered to follow their own order.” “In God’s kingdom in which He rules through the Gospel there is no going to law, nor have we anything to do with law, but everything is summed up in forgiveness, remission and bestowing, and there is no anger or punishment, nothing but benevolence and service of our neighbour.” As to the temporal matters, “there the lawyers are free to help and advise how things are to be.” “If anyone were to try and rule the world according to the Gospel, just think, my good friend, what the result would be. He would break the chains and bonds that hold back the wild and savage beasts.”[2181]—It is true that he here altogether overlooks the fact that religion has, on the contrary, to help in governing the world by her moral laws, restraining the “wild and savage” elements by means of her laws, her authority and her means of grace; just as when speaking above of the two spheres of life in which man is placed he forgets that we are endowed with but one conscience and one responsibility, viz. that of the Christian, which is inseparable from man as he is at present constituted.

“Now, praise be to God, all the world knows,” says Luther, of his sundering of the two spheres of life, “with what diligence and pains I have laboured and still labour to distinguish between the two offices or rules, the temporal and the spiritual, and to keep them, apart; each one now is instructed as to his own work and kept to it, whereas in Popery it was all so entangled and in such confusion that no one kept within his own powers, dominion and rights.”[2182]

Protestants have found the essential difference between Protestantism and Catholicism to consist in the fact, that, according to Luther’s directions, Protestantism separates “religion and theology, faith and knowledge, morality and politics, Christianity and art,” whereas Catholicism, according to the motto of Pius X, seeks to “renew all things in Christ.” “We know that revelation has only an inward mission to the individual soul; the Catholic believes in its public mission for universal civilisation.” “We should fear for the purity of our faith and no less for morality and civilised order should these domains ever be christianised.”[2183]

The result of forbidding the “spiritual rule” ever to encroach on the temporal domain was so to enfeeble the precepts of ethics as to deprive them of any real authority for making themselves felt as a power in secular government.

With Luther everything is constructed without any basis of authority; he proffers, as he is fond of saying, “opinions and advice,”[2184] and even this he does without a trace of theory or method; as for binding regulations he has none; nor has he any Church behind him that can set up an obligatory ethical standard; he recognises indeed the universal priesthood, but no Church with any paramount authority in spiritual things, no hierarchy and no social institution such as the Catholic Church is. This is the chief reason why his moral instructions lack any definite and binding force over people’s minds. The great mass of mankind must be guided by clear and fixed rules, counsels which address themselves to man’s good-will are in themselves practically useless for the direction or guidance of the masses, constituted as they are. The Gospel, moreover, in spite of what Luther says to the contrary, though it brings the glad tidings of salvation and forgiveness, also contains a large number of strict moral precepts; the Divine Founder of the Church, in His wisdom, also equipped her with full power to issue, on the lines traced out by Himself, the commands called for by the needs of every age. She disposes of spiritual penalties and has the right to excommunicate offenders when this is necessary to emphasise her laws.

With Luther the last resource lay in the system of the State-Church. The “Christian authorities” became the authorities of the congregations (see below, p. 579 ff.).[2185] Thus the founder of the new religion frequently requires the rulers who had rallied to his system to make use of their power in order to lend their sanction and authority to the ethical regulations he gave to his followers, and which he himself was unable to enforce.

Here we shall only consider one class of cases where it was of great importance to him to see his “opinion and advice” followed. According to him, as Luthardt himself admits in his “Ethik Luthers,”[2186] “The authorities were to serve and promote the cause of the Evangel.... From this Luther went on, however, to give advice which really was at variance with his fundamental views. It is true when he demands that the rulers should not suffer any such sects as deny the rights, etc., of the authorities, he was merely imposing on them the fulfilment of one of the duties of the State,[2187] but when he requires the rulers to make use of their powers to check the scandal of heresy and false worship, which was the most horrible and dangerous form of scandal; or, when heresy had been proved from Scripture, to forbid its preaching; ‘to insist on the true worship, to punish and forbid false doctrine and idolatry and to risk everything rather than allow themselves and their people to be forced into idolatry and falsehood’; or ‘to banish from the land those who deny such articles as the Divinity of Christ and the redemption,’ etc.; or again, when two opposing parties confront each other, as, for instance, the Lutherans and the Papists, to decide according to Scripture and forbid the party that failed to agree with Scripture to preach,[2188]—all these and similar matters are plainly based on the assumption that the ruler had a right to form an independent opinion as to whether a doctrine was or was not in accordance with Scripture, an assumption which Luther, as a matter of fact, strongly deprecates in theory. When Luther speaks in this way he is taking it for granted that he has to do with a Christian ruler, who as such does not merely perform his office of ruler like the heathen Emperor or the Grand Turk, but is influenced by the Gospel and recognises the Word of God.”

Expressed in different words Luthardt’s ideas would amount to this: According to Luther it is imperative that the rulers should be good Lutherans and accept the Evangel and the Word of God as he taught it. No other Christian ruler may venture to put the above measures in force, for the truth is he is no Christian at all.

This leads us to look closer into Luther’s ideas on the secular authority and the State-Church.

2. The State and the State Church

Most Protestant writers become very eloquent and go into great detail when dealing with the main ideas Luther is supposed to have expressed on the State and on social order.

He maintained, so they assert, and impressed strongly on all ages to come, that the purpose of the State was to keep the peace and uphold the right against the wicked by means of legislation and penalties: “Magistratus instrumentum, per quod Deus pacem et iura conservat.”[2189] This temporal peace was the best earthly possession and comprised all temporal blessings; in point of fact the “true preaching office” should, so he declared, bring peace, but with the greater number “this is not the case,”[2190] so that the authority of the ruler was necessary for the maintenance of outward peace. “This worldly government,” according to him, “preserves temporal peace, rights and life,” indeed he says it makes wild beasts into men and saves men from becoming wild beasts.[2191] The true Evangelical doctrine, unlike the earlier one, leads to the secular government being regarded as “the great gift of God and His own gracious order,”[2192] notwithstanding that all authority was instituted by God on account of the sin that reigns in man. Human reason and experience, and also the Holy Ghost, must teach the authorities how to fulfil their duty. They must, so far as this is possible, work for the common welfare of their subjects in this world. Since, according to Luther, they must punish what is evil in their subjects’ external behaviour and take care that “all public scandal be banished and removed,”[2193] their task seems to trench on morals and on religion. Good sovereigns instruct their people concerning temporal things, “how to manage their homes and farms, how to rule the land and the people, how to make money and secure possessions, how to become rich and powerful,” further, “how we are to till the fields, plough, sow, reap and keep our house.”[2194] In short the ruler must interest himself in the needs of his subjects as “though they were his very own.”[2195] The worldly rulers must provide for the support of their subjects, and particularly for the poor, the widows and orphans, and extend to them their fatherly protection.

Other fine sayings of Luther’s on this subject and on the duties he assigns to the rulers are instanced in plenty.

The ruler “holds the place of a father, only that his sway is more extensive, for he is not merely the father of one family, as it were, but of as many as there are inhabitants, citizens or subjects in his country.... And because they bear this name and title and look upon it as in all honour their greatest treasure, it is our duty to respect them and regard them as our dearest, most precious possession on earth.”[2196] Luther insisted in the strongest terms on the duty of obedience, more particularly after his experiences during the Peasant War. He emphasises very strongly, in opposition to the fanatics, that the secular Courts must rule and their authority be recognised, and also that the oath must be taken when required.

He even tells the rebels: “God would rather suffer the rulers who do what is wrong than the mob whose cause is just. The reason is that when Master Omnes wields the sword and makes war on the pretence that he is in the right, things fare badly. For a Prince, if he is to remain a Prince, cannot well chop off the heads of all, though he may act unjustly and cut off the heads of some.” For he must needs retain some about him, continues Luther with a touch of humour; but when the mob is in revolt then “off go all the heads.”[2197] “Even where a ruler has pledged himself to govern his subjects in accordance with a constitution—‘according to prearranged articles’—Luther will not admit that it is lawful to deprive him of his authority should he disregard his oath.... No one has the right or the command from God to enforce a penalty in the case of the authorities.”[2198] But things ought not to reach such a pass in the case of the prince’s government. Obedience should make everything smooth for him. He cherishes and provides for all, as many as he has subjects, and may thus be called the father of them all, just as in old days the heathen called their pious rulers the fathers and saviours of the country.[2199]

These ideas are not, however, peculiar to Luther. They were current long before his time and had been discussed from every point of view by Christian writers who, in turn, had borrowed them from antiquity.

In all this, which, furthermore, Luther never summed up in a theory, all that is new is his original and forcible manner of putting forward his ideas. “It is hardly possible to argue,” says Frank G. Ward, one of the latest Protestant writers in this field, “that his view of the duty of the State contained anything very new.... The opinion that the State had an educational duty was held even in classical antiquity.”[2200] If it was held in Pagan times, still more so was this the case in the Christian Middle Ages. It is to classical antiquity that we just heard Luther appeal when he referred to the “pater patriÆ.” He had become acquainted in the Catholic schools with the ideas of antiquity purified by Christian philosophy.

Still, there is much that is really new in Luther’s views on the State and the rulers which does not come out in the passage quoted above; what is new, however, far from being applauded by modern Protestant judges, is often reprehended by them.

As the accounts we had to give elsewhere were already so full it will not be necessary again to go into details; it is, however, worth while again to emphasise the conclusions already arrived at by calling attention to some data not as yet taken into consideration.

In the first place one thing that was new was the energetic application made by Luther in his earlier years of his peculiar principle of the complete separation of world and Church. The State, or, rather, ordered society (for there was as yet no political State in the modern sense), was consequently de-Christianised by him, at least in principle, at least if we ignore the change which soon took place in Luther himself (see below, p. 576 f.). The proof of this de-Christianisation is found in his own statements. In his writing of 1523, “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt,” he expressly told the rulers of the land that they had no concern with good people and “that it was not their business to make them pious,” but that they were only there to rule a world estranged from God, and to maintain order by force when the peace was disturbed or men suffered injustice. Amongst real Christians there would, according to Luther, be no secular rulers.[2201] Even when Luther, in this tract of which he thought so highly, is instructing a pious Christian ruler on his duties, he has nothing to say of his duty to protect and further the Church, though in earlier days all admonitions to the princes had insisted mainly on this.

His view of the two powers at work in the social order was new, particularly as regards the spiritual sphere and the position of those holding authority in the Church. The believing Christians in Luther’s eyes formed merely a union of souls,[2202] without any hierarchy or a jot of spiritual authority or power; there is in fact only one power on earth qualified to issue regulations, viz. the secular power; the combination of the two powers, which had formed the basis of public order previously, was thrown over, any spiritual ruler being out of place where all the faithful were priests. There is but a “ministry” of the word, conferred by election of the faithful, and its one duty is to bring the Gospel home to souls; it knows nothing of law, vengeance or punishment.[2203] The ministry of the Word must indeed stand, but is by no means a supervising body, in spite of the “neo-Lutheran conception of the office,” as some Protestant theologians of the present day disapprovingly call it.

Carl Holl, in his “Luther und das landesherrliche Kirchenregiment” (1911), says with some truth: “Luther knows as little of a Christian State as he does of a Christian shoemaking trade”; “Our life here below is only Christian in so far as the individuals concerned are Christians. Their sphere of action is not prescribed to Christians by Christianity but rather by the divine order of nature.”[2204]—Hence the whole public congregational system, so far as it needs laws to govern it, must remain on a purely natural basis.

This view is confirmed by the following odd-sounding statements of Luther’s:

Among Christians the sword can have no place, “hence you cannot make use of it on or among Christians, who have no need of it”; still the world “cannot and may not do without it” (this power); in other words, as Christians, both subjects and rulers suffer injustice gladly according to the Gospel, but, for the sake of their neighbours and for the keeping of order in the world, both favour the use of force. Secular rule does not extend beyond “life and limb and what is outward on this earth.”[2205] “Our squires, our princes and our bishops, shall see what fools they are,” when they “order us to believe the Church, the Fathers and the Councils though there is no Word of God in them. It is the apostles of the devil who order such things, not the Church.” And yet “our Emperor and the clever princes are doing this now.”[2206] Hence the princes must keep to their own outward sphere, viz. only coerce the wicked, and not seek to rule over Christians.

“Christians can be governed by nothing but the Word of God. For Christians must be ruled by faith, not by outward works.... Those who do not believe are not Christians, nor do they belong to the kingdom of Christ, but to the kingdom of the world, hence they must be coerced and driven with the sword and by the outward government. Christians do everything that is good of their own accord and without being compelled, and God’s Word is enough for them.”[2207]

When Luther contrasts in this way the kingdom of Christ and the true life of a Christian with the temporal kingdom and the functions of the authorities, he goes so far in his “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt,” and even in his sermons, as strongly to depreciate the secular or civil power. He teaches, for instance, that the Christian who holds the office of ruler, must do things that are forbidden to Christians as such, for instance, pronounce sentence, put to death and use other strong measures against the unruly. But all this belongs in reality to hell.—“Whoever is under the secular rule,” so we read in a curious sermon in Luther’s Church-Postils, “is still far from the kingdom of heaven, for the place where all this belongs is hell; for instance, the prince who governs his people in such a way as to allow none to suffer injustice, and no evildoer to go unrequited, does well and receives praise.... Nevertheless, as explained above, this is not appointed for those who belong to heaven but merely in order that people may not sink yet deeper into hell and make things even worse. Therefore no one who is under the secular government can boast that he is acting rightly before God; in His sight it is still all wrong”; for of Christians more is required; whoever wishes to act according to the Gospel must ever be ready to suffer injustice.[2208] But the secular authority must, either “of its own initiative or at the instance of others, without any complaint, entreaty or exertion of his, help and protect him. Where it does not he must allow himself to be fleeced and abused, and not resist evil, according to the words of Christ. And be assured that this is no counsel of perfection as our sophists lyingly and blasphemously assert, but a strict command binding on all Christians.”[2209] There is a huge gulf between the kingdom of such a Christian and that of the “jailers, hangmen, lawyers, advocates and such-like rabble.”

Such are the epithets Luther flings at the secular power, the State and its ministers, whose task it is to “seek out the wicked, convict them, strangle and put them to death.”[2210] These authorities must indeed exist and a Christian must submit to them willingly—not for his own sake but for that of his neighbour, i.e. for the sake of the common good; he himself has no need of them; the behaviour of the Christian towards this secular power must be dictated by his Christian love for his neighbour.

A Protestant critic writes: “Luther hardly recognises any so-called Christian State.... We find Luther warning his hearers against seeing anything particularly useful or indispensable behind the work of the government. The ruler’s sense of responsibility was to be something purely human.... The Christian in fact has no need of any ruler.”[2211] “Luther’s interest in things political (see below) is practically nil; where the State can be of any use to him he welcomes it and even gives it its meed of praise.... His appreciation of the State is usually just a matter of feeling.”[2212] We come to see that “he took no independent interest in politics.... He even goes so far as to characterise the outward order of the State as a necessary evil. State organisation in his eyes is simply a kind of enforced charity towards our neighbour.”[2213]

“Luther knows no Christian State,” says another Protestant writer of Luther’s theories. “The State is as worldly a thing as eating and drinking”; indeed its commands and its deeds “all belong to hell.”[2214]

This worldly bond of union is good, when, with God’s help, it follows the dictates of reason. It is the only union that exists, for Luther does not recognise State and Church as two unions. This, says Holl, is now regarded “as an axiom.”[2215] We may, it is true, admit with Holl that Luther is not quite consistent in this, but this is only because he reverts inadvertently to the old ideas, and, even in his “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt,” incidentally speaks of a spiritual authority and of bishops in whom it is invested.[2216]

Some Protestant writers, quite erroneously, extol the “Christendom” equipped with both spiritual and secular authority which Luther substituted for the twin powers of yore. It was only owing to his want of logic, and out of practical considerations for the interests of his religion (see below), that he was able to endow as he did the State with spiritual authority. And, besides, “Christendom,” to which indeed he often enough refers, had, in reality, been completely abrogated by him at least in the traditional sense, viz. of the kingdom of God on earth which embraces as in one family all the baptised. For had he not deprived baptism of its dignity and made membership of the Church dependent on the faith of the adult?

“Luther drags away the corner stone on which the whole edifice [of Christendom] rests,” says Holl. “According to his teaching we are not simply baptised into the Church as was the case according to the Catholic doctrine. Baptism, indeed, even to him, constitutes the foundation of Christianity, but the grace of the sacrament is only effective in those who believe in the promises offered therein (‘Sacramenta non implentur dum fiunt, sed dum creduntur’).... Luther, by making admission into the spiritual society dependent on a personal condition, destroyed the idea of Christendom in the mediÆval Catholic sense”;[2217] this Holl regards as his chief merit.

This is undoubtedly so true, that, in the case of the wars against the Turks, Luther refused to hear of any “Christendom” in the traditional sense which might be pitted against the Crescent, and this on the ground that but few of the combatants were real Christians, i.e. real believers in the Evangel he preached.[2218] He also reserves the honourable title of Christians, as the headings of many of his writings show, for those who personally professed the new faith.[2219]

Was Luther the Founder of the Modern State?

The question seems so extraordinary, that we must hasten to say that some of Luther’s more passionate admirers have actually claimed for him that he prepared the way for the modern State.

The difficulty of proving that he is really entitled to such an honour becomes obvious as soon as we recall that all modern theories of government agree in seeing the ideal community in a well-knit body with equal rights and equal liberties for all, religious freedom included. The same standard of justice applies without exception to every citizen and all religions (such at least is the programme) are esteemed alike; moreover, to this standard of justice, all, even the monarch or the supreme representative of the republic, must bow, seeing that the heads of the State have ceased to be absolute.

But what, according to Luther’s theory and practice, was the position of the Lutheran ruler in respect of his civil and religious authority? How did it stand with the freedom and independence of his subjects, particularly where different religious practices co-existed?

It is true that, taking his instructions to the rulers just discussed, which he derived from his principle of the separation of Church and world, we should expect him to recognise freedom of conscience. The instructions, however, though seemingly addressed to all, sprang from his opposition to the Catholic rulers. The latter, particularly in the infancy of Protestantism, were above all to be urged to grant entire liberty and not to trouble about religion; what Luther wished to impress upon them was that they had no right to interfere with the Lutheran movement within their jurisdiction.[2220]

Luther spoke quite otherwise when dealing with princes who were favourable to his preaching, or who had introduced the new religious system. In proportion as the rulers and municipalities that favoured his cause grew more numerous, he came to confer on them full powers to stamp out the Catholic faith, and even made it their duty so to do. He also perceived all too well the extent to which zealous Protestant princes, such as Johann of Saxony and Philip of Hesse, could further his innovations. From that time forward he promoted the growing authority of the sovereigns over the Churches, above all by warmly defending the principle that in every country uniformity of worship and doctrine must prevail, short of which there would always be “revolts and sects,” as he said in 1526.[2221]

This was, however, to destroy the main groundwork of the modern State theory, viz. the personal freedom of the individual. It was to interfere with the evenness of justice and with the sacred right of conscience. What other rights of the subject would the sovereign regard as sacred once the door had been opened to arbitrary action in the domain of religious practice?[2222]

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]

The Prince as Absolute Patriarch

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.

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]

On one occasion Luther points out, that in the past, the Pope of Rome had been all in all. Now it is the sovereign of the land, who, as God’s own Vicar, is all in all.

Thus we have here, writes Frank Ward in his “Darstellung der Ansichten Luthers vom Staat,” “almost the counterpart of the old ecclesiastical absolutism, seeing that all ecclesiastical functions and conditions so far as they belong to the outward domain are put under the State.”[2240] Instead of its being “almost the counterpart,” it would be better to say that it was an absolute caricature of the supposed ecclesiastical absolutism of the past. Ward, however, goes on to say that in the chapter in question he had only shown how, “Luther gave the State an independent dignity and position, and how he had enlarged and strengthened its claims.”

Luther’s Real Merit and his Claims

If anyone ever really believed that the modern State was in any way embodied in Luther’s ideal or that he paved the way for it, the easiest way to disprove such an assumption would be to show that the most essential feature of the modern State is entirely wanting in the Lutheran, patriarchal one, viz. freedom and the political co-operation of the people, and, above all, the vital atmosphere of personal and corporate independence in religious matters.

In point of fact the most that can be argued is that Luther to some extent, though in an entirely negative way, paved the road for the modern conception of the State.

This he did by his relentless opposition to the Church, which had so long held sway. As early as the days of Boniface VIII attempts had been made to curtail her action in politics. The efforts of some of the Catholic sovereigns, who, without denying the inherent rights of the spiritual authority, laboured to establish State-Churches also tended in the same direction. Luther was, however, the first who sought to destroy all ecclesiastical authority, as a mere symbol of Antichrist. Hence, for those rulers who took his part, one of the chief obstacles that had withstood the growth of modern conditions was swept away. Nevertheless, wellnigh three hundred years, full of gloomy experiences, had to elapse before a way could be found out of the new labyrinth of despotism, indolence and disorder; and, all this while, the theocratic patriarch of Lutheranism almost invariably stood as an obstacle in the way of development.

Frank Ward may indeed assert, that it is possible “to appeal at least to the spirit of his theory of the State, if not to its every detail.”[2248] This, however, is only possible if by “its spirit” we understand not what was new but the old, wholesome, traditional elements which Luther retained, i.e. the political ideas handed down by antiquity and the Christian philosophy of the past, on which he so skilfully impressed his own drastic touch. To these olden elements Luther was, however, scarcely fair.

Luther’s error is evident, though unfortunately not to all, as we can convince ourselves by reading the eulogies of Luther which are still so common under the pen of Protestant writers; for instance, that Luther had “deepened Augustine’s view of the State”; that he was ever moving forward “in a straight line,” expanding and perfecting the knowledge already acquired; and that even in his “Von welltlicher Uberkeytt” “he was already at his best,” etc.

It may, therefore, be all the more useful to look a little more closely into one side of the present subject which has not yet been dealt with but which leads to interesting disclosures, viz. into the question of the various circumstances, some outward, some inward and personal, which led Luther to evolve his theory of the patriarchal, absolutist State. Here the Visitation of 1527-28 stands out as a milestone on the road of his development.

Other Factors which assisted in the Establishment of the State-Church

It was a common phenomenon in all the earlier struggles against the ecclesiastical hierarchy for the separatists to seek for support and assistance from the secular power and the State. From the time of the earliest controversies in the Church this tendency had been noticed among those who broke away. Luther too, from the time of his first public rupture, had cast his eyes on the secular power; nay, even earlier, in his Commentary on Romans, he betrays a tendency to put the secular before the spiritual.[2257]

To these ideas he gave full play in the call to reform the Church which he addressed “To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation.”

For the next few years, however, the ideas are less to the fore. Luther was very well aware that a quiet and gradual procedure would appeal far more to the then Elector, Frederick the Wise, than any urging on of the innovations at high pressure and with State interference. The Elector was in fact so averse to taking any strong measures, that on the contrary he frequently impressed on the Wittenberg leaders the need there was for caution.

Matters assumed another aspect, when, in 1525, there came a change of ruler. The Elector Johann of Saxony was a zealous friend of Luther’s and soon became the real patron of Lutheranism. His attitude towards the innovations, taken with Luther’s new tendencies, constituted a prime factor in the rise of a State-governed Church.

Another factor was the condition of the Lutheran congregations which had so far sprung up. They were scattered and devoid of organisation. Not seldom they bore within them seeds of dissension born as they had been out of quarrels within the parishes, and maintained for the most part only by the violent action of a majority of the council. The petty rulers naturally sought to link themselves up with the greater powers so as to maintain both the ecclesiastical innovations and their newly acquired rights. The sovereign was a pillar of strength on whom they leaned, when in doubt, when it was a question of defending the preachers they had appointed, of removing persons they regarded with disfavour, or of allaying disputes amongst the burghers.

To all this, however, must be added a further circumstance which contributed to bring about the State supremacy of a later date, viz., the corruption of many of the newly formed congregations, a corruption which urgently called for a strong hand and adequate means of coercion. “When, after the Peasant War,” writes Carl MÜller, “the dreadful decline in things ecclesiastical made itself felt, the parsonages and schools threatening to fall into ruins and the agricultural population to relapse into savagery, the time arrived for the rulers of the land to come into greater prominence. It was now no longer a question of individual congregations but rather of the whole country, and above all of the rising generation.”[2258]

The intervention of the prince subsequent to the victory over the peasants in 1525 also greatly promoted the increased devotion with which men of influence, Luther included, attached themselves to the authority of the ruler as a bulwark against revolution. The arrogance of the country folk had to be broken by strengthening the power of the sovereign; this Luther repeated so often and so loudly that his foes began to call him a footlicker of the princes.

Significance of the Visitation and Inquisition held in the Saxon Electorate

The decisive importance, for the inward development of the new Church system and for Luther’s position, of the Visitation of the churches of the Saxon Electorate held in 1528 has already been pointed out cursorily.[2259] The Visitation brought to a head a growth which had long been in process. The princely supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs which then came about and was formally sanctioned in Saxony became, with Luther’s consent, which was partly given freely, partly wrung from him, something permanent in the birthplace of the new Church, the Visitations continuing to be carried out in the same way by the prince of the land. Saxony provided a model which was gradually followed in other districts where Lutheranism prevailed, while the then tendency to strengthen the reigning houses so as to enable them to hold their own against Emperor and Empire also exercised a powerful influence.

The Electoral Visitation which Luther had counselled and to which he most zealously lent his help, had for its aim, according to his own words, which we must take in their most literal sense, “the constituting of the churches” because “everything is now so mangled.”[2260] So much did he expect from it that he even expressed the hope that it would clear up for the future the whole problem of the new “Church” and its organisation, which, strange to say, he had never seen fit to think out theoretically. As a matter of fact it was “cleared up,” and that by the very programme for the Visitation issued by the Court. What was to be instituted was to be neither a Church apart, nor a number of free Congregational Churches, nor a great independent National Church, but a State Establishment, a compulsory Church in fact, though calling itself a National Church upheld by the charity of the State.[2261]

We have the programme of the Visitation in the three documents which follow in chronological order, the “Instructions” for the Visitors themselves issued by the Elector on June 16, 1527,[2262] the “Instructions of the Visitors addressed to the ministers of the Saxon Electorate” and the Preface to the same which Luther composed, both of which appeared in print together in March, 1528.[2263]

It can scarcely be doubted that Luther had a hand in the drafting of the Electoral Instructions, which form a sort of Magna Charta of princely supremacy in Church matters. All his previous written communications with the Court had been tending towards this end. In his earliest efforts to bring about the Visitation he had told the ruler that it pertained to his “office” to see that the Evangelical workers were remunerated, that, into his hands “as the supreme head” had fallen “all the monasteries and foundations” and, with them, the “duty and obligation of seeing into a matter in which no one else could or had a right to interfere.” “Not God’s command alone but our own needs require that some step should here be taken.” Thus he demands that the prince, by virtue of his own authority as “one appointed by God for the matter and empowered to act,” should nominate four persons as Visitors, who by his “orders should arrange for the erection and support of schools and parsonages where this was wanted”; of these persons, two were to attend to the material needs, and two who had had a theological training were to examine into the doctrine, preaching and performance of spiritual duties.[2264]

Such were the “principles which were eventually carried into practice. For ages after, the Lutheran sovereigns asserted their right to draw up rules concerning the doctrine and constitution of their National Churches, and, to this end, not only laid claim to the old ecclesiastical revenues but also to the right to levy special taxes on their subjects.”[2265]

Luther was moved to take up his new standpoint not merely by the needs of the day but also by pious Lutherans, such as Nicholas Hausmann, the pastor of Zwickau, who by examples taken from the Bible had pointed out to the Elector himself what his rights and duties were in this field;[2266] an even stronger influence was, maybe, exerted on him by the lawyers of the Court, who were intent on making the most of the rights of the sovereign, especially by Chancellor BrÜck, their spokesman, with whom Luther was brought into closer contact when seeking to remedy the existing distress. He himself, as we shall see, hesitated a little about entering upon this new course. The supremacy of the prince nevertheless seemed inevitably called for by the secularisation of Church property, also for the appointment and payment of the pastors, for the removal of incapable preachers and those who excited the mob,—especially those of “fanatic” inclinations—and, lastly, for the final and violent uprooting of Catholic worship where it still lingered.

A Visitation was begun in the Electorate in Feb., 1527, by a very characteristic commission appointed by the sovereign assisted by the University of Wittenberg; it was composed of the following members: the lawyer, Hieronymus Schurff, the two noblemen Hans von der Planitz and Asmus von Haubitz, and Melanchthon. The Electoral Instructions of June, 1527, referred to above were the result of previous experience, and had the approval of both Luther and Melanchthon. The practical experience already gained also proved useful in the drawing up of the “Unterricht der Visitatorn an die Pharhern” which was of a more theological and practical character. It is almost entirely the work of Melanchthon, though it was formally approved and accepted by Luther after some slight alterations. It was sent to Luther by the Elector, who had carefully gone into its details, and who directed him to look through it and also write an historical preface (“narration”) to it, though the work as a whole was to appear to come from the Court. In due time both the “Instructions” and the Preface were sent to the press by the Elector.

What had transpired of the contents of the “Unterricht” had already aroused considerable opposition within the Lutheran camp; it was displeasing to the zealots to find Melanchthon again returning half-way to the Catholic doctrine in the matter of penance, free-will and good works. They openly declared that official Lutheranism was “slinking back.” After its appearance further criticism was aroused among both Protestants and Catholics. Of the Catholic writers, CochlÆus ironically drew attention in his “Lutherus septiceps” to the withdrawal that had taken place from Luther’s former crass assertions. He also incidentally describes the strange appearance of the State Visitors: “Here comes the Visitor wearing a new kind of mitre, setting up a new form of Papacy, prescribing new laws for divine worship, and reviving what had long since fallen into disuse and dragging it forth into the light once more.”[2267] Joachim von der Heyden in his printed letter to Catherine Bora even declared, that, in the rules for the Visitation, Luther “had resumed the Imperial rights,” which he had “for a while discarded.” He is referring to certain of the rules dealing with Church property, which were to Luther’s personal interest.[2268]

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]

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]

In it, albeit cautiously, he made certain reservations, which show that the absolutist system of Church government proposed by the Prince did not really appeal to him. It is clear he did not feel quite at ease about the Instructions, because of his former advocacy of the independence of the congregations in ecclesiastical matters, because of the future subserviency of Church to State and because the directions were at variance with honest convictions deeply rooted in his mind from the days of his youth. At the same time his misgivings are expressed only with the greatest restraint.

He says: “Although His Electoral Highness is not commanded to teach and to exercise a spiritual rule, yet it is his duty as the secular authority to insist that no dissensions, factions and revolt take place among his subjects”; for which reason too the Emperor Constantine had exhorted the Christians to unity in faith and doctrine. He adds: His Highness, the Prince, had settled on the Visitation at Luther’s request “out of Christian charity and for God’s sake, though this was not indeed required of him as a secular ruler.”

These, however, were mere Platonic excuses by which he sought to reassure himself, to explain the contradictions involved in his position, and, probably, to defeat those who looked askance at this Visitation ordained by the State.

It is easy to perceive from the language of the Preface that one of the writer’s objects was to meet the objections he feared from his own party. Among the ministers were some, who, it was to be apprehended, would “ungratefully and proudly despise” the action of the Prince; “madcaps, who out of utter malice cannot tolerate anything that is common and applies to all.” These he reminds of the sovereign’s powers of coercion by which they would be “sundered.” Seemingly he also tries to defend himself from the very natural charge of having introduced an incompetent authority into the Church Visitation; this he does by limiting the sovereign power as we just heard him do. The charge, that the Instructions of the Visitors were untrue to his former doctrine (he means more particularly that of good works) he answers by a rhetorical assertion to the contrary.

He also thinks it necessary to defend the measures aimed at those whose belief is different; this he does by a reference to the “unity of the spirit,” which sounds rather strange coming from him. To the Catholics who were obliged to quit their country since, for the sake of peace, conformity was required, Luther sends the following greeting: “Be careful to keep, as Paul teaches, the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace and charity Amen” (Eph. iv. 3).

When judging the Preface the fact must be taken into account that the “Unterricht” which Luther is launching on the public introduces amongst other things the office of the “super-attendents” (superintendents). In these directions coercion is defended in the strongest terms. Whoever preaches or teaches “against the Word of God,” what is “conducive to revolt against the authorities,” is to be “prohibited” from doing so by the Superintendent; if this be of no avail then the matter is to be “notified at once to the officer, in order that His Electoral Highness may take further steps.” All this simply on the authority of the sovereign.

Hence had Luther really wished, as has been asserted, to protest against the powers claimed by the sovereign and his Visitors this should have been very differently worded.

The passage regarding the “super-attendent” in itself shows that Luther did not regard the “Unterricht” merely as a spiritual guide, as has been recently asserted, or as representing that purely spiritual function which, according to him, is concerned only with the conscience, with doctrine and advice, and knows nothing of any law or command. This naturally follows from the above, even though the elastic Preface contains a qualifying statement, viz. that he could not allow the directions in the “Unterricht to be issued as a strict law lest we set up new Papal Decretals”; it is his intention to send them forth as a “history or account, and also as a testimony and confession of our faith.” In this, again, we can only see his desire to explain away the disagreeable expedient into which he had been forced by circumstances.

Since the beginning of the Church, he goes on, there had always been an episcopal Visitation though now this had ceased and “Christendom lay torn and distracted”; none of us (the Wittenberg Professors) having been called or definitely appointed to this, he had come “to play the part of conscience” and had moved the sovereign to take this step. In other words, no one on earth has the right to “constitute” new churches, not even the man who discovered the new Evangel; it was merely a venture on Luther’s part, when, owing to the urgency of the case, he called in the assistance of the secular power. Such a mental process, is, to say the least, highly involved.

It is sufficiently evident that this Preface, inscribed, so to speak, over the portals of the new State-governed Church, may lay claim to great psychological interest.

The interest deepens if we turn our attention to the demonological ideas Luther here brings into play. At that time he was suffering from the after-effects of his dreadful struggles with the “devil” (1527-28) and with his own conscience. That, here too, the devil might not be absent, he shows in the Preface how Satan had wrought all sorts of mischief amongst the Papists (this is Luther’s consolation) by neglect of the Visitations, and had set up nothing but “spiritual delusions and monk-calves.”[2277] The “idle, lazy bellies” had been forced to serve Satan. He gives this warning for the future: “The Devil has not grown good or devout this year, nor will he ever do so.” “Christ says in John viii. that the devil is a murderer.”[2278]

The words Luther uses when he characterises the intervention of the secular authorities in Church matters as merely a work of necessity or charity on the part of the chief member of the Church, are of psychological rather than of doctrinal importance.

What Luther says of the rights of the State authorities in Church affairs reveals how little his heart was in this abandonment of ecclesiastical authority to the secular arm. It shows the need he felt of concealing beneath fair words the road he had thus opened up to State-administration of the Church.[2279] The Saxon Elector is a “Christian member”; he is a “Christian brother” in the Church, who, as sovereign, must play his part; his intervention here appears as a service performed by the ruler towards the Christian community. “Our emergency Bishop,” such is the title Luther once bestows on Johann Frederick. The state of financial confusion amongst the Protestants is what chiefly demands, he says, that “His Electoral Highness, the embodiment of the secular authority, should look into and settle things.” On the other hand, it is not of his secular authority, but simply of his authority, that Luther speaks in the writing he addressed to the Elector on Nov. 22, 1526, where he appeals to him to make an end of the material and spiritual mischief by establishing “schools, pulpits and parsonages.” He says, “Now that all spiritual order and restraint have come to an end in the principality and all the monasteries and institutions have fallen into the hands of Your Electoral Highness as the supreme head, this brings with it the duty and labour of regulating this matter, which no one else either can or ought to undertake.” “God has in this case called and empowered Your Electoral Highness to do this.”[2280] The supervision of the doctrine as well as of the personal conduct of the ministers, and not merely the providing for their material wants, all come within the ordinary province of the “supreme head.”

Divergent Currents

The psychological significance of Luther’s hesitation to sanction the ruler’s supremacy in church government lies in its affording us a fresh insight into the various drifts of his mind and temperament.

On the one hand, he helped to raise State-ecclesiasticism into the saddle, and, on the other, he would fain see it off again and looks at it with the unfriendliest of eyes. He not only gives us to understand in the most unmistakable manner that it is not his ideal, but, up to the very last, he says things of it which ring almost like an anathema; nor does he forbear to heap reproaches on the natural consequences of an institution of which notwithstanding he himself was the father. Only error, with its ambiguity and want of logic, combined with an obstinate will, could issue in such contradictions.

His earlier and truer recognition of the independence of the spiritual power refused to be entirely extinguished. It was the same here as with Luther’s doctrine of faith alone, of justification and good works; again and again the old, wholesome views break out from under the crust of the new errors and, all involuntarily, find expression in quite excellent moral admonitions. So too his former orthodox views concerning the dignity of the Bible are at variance with the liberties he takes with the Word of God, and, even according to Protestant divines, lead him to an ambiguous theory and to a practice full of contradictions.[2281] Yet again, his call to make use of armed force against the Emperor is contrary to what he had taught for long years regarding the unlawfulness of such resistance; the disquiet and perturbation, the consciousness of this causes him he seeks to drown beneath ever louder battle cries.[2282] We find something similar throughout the whole field of his psychology: everywhere we can detect gainstriving currents.

In the questions bearing on the rights of the State and the Church, his temperament, which was so susceptible to sudden changes, needed only some strong impulse from without in order to bring to light one or other of these opposing trends. One powerful stimulus of the sort was afforded by the attractive outlook of bettering the frightful condition of the Lutheran congregations in Saxony, making his disputed cause victorious, and at the same time getting rid of the remaining Papists. By this alluring prospect he was taken captive. It would seem to have led him to shut his eyes to the iron fetters which State supremacy in Church matters would forge about his Church system not merely in Saxony but far beyond its borders. When, afterwards, he would willingly have retraced his steps, it was already too late. He was condemned to make statements extolling freedom in spiritual matters, the futility of which was plain to himself, and which, therefore, Protestants should not take so seriously as some of them do.

It is not sufficiently realised how such opposing tendencies run side by side from the very outset of his career.

We already know that Luther inclined for a long while to the establishment of a Church-Apart or assembly of true believers. Yet, at the same time, he was working for a National Church, albeit he was convinced that such a Church would for the most part be composed of non-Christians. Eventually the latter was to hold the field owing to the force of outward circumstances.[2291]

He was in favour of a Church which should be entirely free, and at the same time of a confessional Church with binding dogmas. So strongly did he stand for freedom in all ecclesiastical matters that he not only refused to recognise the existence of any spiritual “authority” among his followers, but also declared no Pope, no angel, no man had the power to rob the faithful of this freedom or to impose anything on him.[2292] At the same time, however, he was in favour of that strict disciplinary government which finds its expression in the regulations for the Visitation.

According to Luther there is no real Canon Law. He refuses to recognise State and Church as two bodies which exist side by side.[2293] And yet he complains of the way in which the rights of the Church, i.e. of his Church, were being thwarted by the lawyers.[2294]

He wished a distinction to be drawn between the Prince and the Christian, and declared: “His princely authority has nothing to do with his Christianity”; and yet he himself united the spiritual and the secular power in the prince’s hands so closely that they were never afterwards to be wrenched apart. As Carl MÜller truly remarks, we must not “press too much the term ‘emergency bishop for the time being’ which Luther applies to the secular ruler.”[2295]

True to one of his ruling tendencies, he based on the Bible the rights and duties of the authorities in every department of the spiritual sphere. “If the authorities do not wish it, then neither must you.” Nevertheless, almost in the same breath, he scoffs at the claims of the authorities when they did not happen to fall in with his wishes, or when they proved an obstacle to the expulsion of Popery: “Why pay attention to him [the Elector]? He has no right to command except in worldly things.”[2296]

He stood for the Consistories and promoted their establishment in spite of Spalatin’s objections; and yet, on the other hand, he opposed them, saying, that the Courts were after ruling the Churches as they pleased, and that Satan was bent on introducing the secular power into the Church.[2297] Hence, from about 1540, he attempted to set up Protestant bishops as in the case of Nicholas Amsdorf.[2298] The Consistories displeased him and made life unbearable. Still, because the ecclesiastical edifice he had erected could not do without them, he bridled his tongue; very different is the picture of Luther from that of the champions of the Church’s independence in the early days of Christianity, for instance, Ambrose or Chrysostom, who, regardless of self, staked all they had in the struggle against the oppressors of the Church. His habit of making the naughty lawyers of the Court the butt of his complaints is significant enough, for the really responsible party was the Court itself and the Elector in person, who used his newly acquired power to rule more autocratically in Church matters than any Pope had ever done.

Conclusion

The prince did not rule as a member of a religious commonwealth which also had rights of its own, but rather as one holding the highest powers of the episcopate; he nominated the pastors and provided for their support; he watched over the lives and behaviour of the clergy, and, at Luther’s instance, took proceedings against the false teachers and the remnants of Popery; he alone controlled the consistory which acted in his name; matrimonial cases were already being dealt with by his lawyers and the disposal and management of the property which had formerly belonged to the Church depended entirely on the Court. The right of the congregations “to appoint and dismiss preachers and to pronounce on doctrine” seemed now forgotten. If a layman dared to call a preacher to task the authorities were bound to take proceedings against him for disturbance of the public peace and order.

It only remains to add, that, of the diverging currents, that one is always the strongest which seems most likely to promote his work, the diffusion of his doctrine and the growth of his Church. A glance at the weathercock of expediency will tell us which tendency we may expect to find predominant, for, as a rule, it is the prospect of success that decides him. At the same time it must be admitted, that, in his zeal for his cause, he is at times hardly aware of the extent to which he is proving untrue to his original plans.

The present-day observer of such vacillation even in matters so far-reaching and fundamental will naturally ask himself how it was that Luther’s fickleness failed to discourage his followers. The answer is, however, not far to seek. He himself, as a general rule, concealed the actual state of the case under the veil of his eloquence, and his partisans were either not aware of how things really stood or else followed him with a blind enthusiasm for the common aims and the common struggle which all his changes and contradictions could not avail to quench. This was the origin of the picture which so many German Protestants cherish of Luther. To them he was a champion of the Church and the State, faithful to his principles to the last. Such a portrait differs widely from that which the historian draws from an impartial study of Luther’s writings and correspondence.[2304]

A Protestant Church-historian, H. Hermelink, recently attempted to place Luther side by side with the “greatest politicians” of our nation.[2305] Although worldly diplomacy and organisation were not Luther’s strong point, still there is much truth in this idea. All that we have said tends to confirm this, though possibly not quite in the sense intended by Hermelink. At the same time what Carl MÜller says is also not without its justification: “Luther lacked an insight into the character of the secular government, which, once it has been pushed in a given direction, cannot be expected to stand still at the point which he fixes as the limit of its powers. Thus the longer he lived the more reason he had to complain of the lawyers, and, when he was dead, the process went on even further.”[2306]

END OF VOL. V.

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