"I will give children to be their prelates and their rulers shall be childish men, I will take from them every mighty man, the wise, the prudent and the man of war," [Isa. 3:4] etc. Since, then, incapable or evil rulers are God's chastisement, and there are so many among us who deserve such chastisement, we must not be surprised if the government wrongs us and abuses its power toward us, nay, we must wonder and thank God when it does not wrong us and do us injustice.
17. Wherefore, since the world is at present overburdened, as it has abundantly deserved to be because of its heinous sins, with young, imprudent and inexperienced rulers, especially in the spiritual estate, so that this age of ours is extraordinarily perilous, we must act very prudently and by all means see to it that we hold the government and all authority in the highest honor, even as Christ honors the authority of Pilate, Herod, Annas, Caiaphas, and of the temporal rulers of His time we must not permit such grievous abuses and the childish rule of the prelates to move us to despise all authority, so that despite those unworthy persons who bear rule we may not at the same time despise their authority, but cheerfully bear what it imposes, or reuse to bear it at least with humility and proper respect. For God cannot and will not permit authority to be wantonly and impudently resisted when it does not force us to do what is against God or His commandments70, though they themselves do as much as they can against God, or injure us as much as they will. There are some whom He Himself would judge and condemn, and such are those great and powerful tyrants; so too, there are those whom He would help, and such are the oppressed sufferers. Therefore we should yield to this His will and leave the mighty to His sword and judgment, and allow Him to help us, as St. Paul says: "O dearly beloved brethren, neither avenge nor defend yourselves, but rather give place unto the wrath of God, because it is written. Vengeance belongs to Me alone and I will repay each one [Deut. 32:35]." [Rom. 12:19]
And yet we should humbly tell these prelates (especially should the preachers rebuke them, yet only by showing them from the Word of God) that they are acting against God and show them what He would have them do, and in addition diligently and earnestly pray to God or them; even as Jeremiah wrote to the children of Israel in Babylon that they should zealously pray or the king of Babylon, or his son and for his kingdom, although he had taken them captive, had troubled and slain them and done them all manner of evil.
And we can easily do this if we remember that the ban and all unrighteous authority cannot harm our souls, provided we submit to them, and they must ever be of profit, unless they are despised. So also are the authorities a thousandfold worse in the sight of God than we, and are therefore to be pitied rather than wickedly to be despised. For this reason we are also commanded in the law of Moses that no one shall revile the rulers, be they good or evil, even though they give great occasion. In short, we must have evil or childish rulers,—if it is not the Turk, then it must needs be the Christians. The world is far too wicked to be worthy of good and pious lords, it must have princes who go to war, levy taxes and shed blood, and it must have spiritual tyrants who impoverish and burden it with bulls and letters71 and laws. This and other chastisements are rather what it has deserved, and to resist them is nothing else than to resist God's chastisement. As humbly as I conduct myself when God sends me a sickness, so humbly should I conduct myself toward the evil government, which the same God also sends me.
18. When we are justly and deservedly put under the ban our chief concern should be to correct the sins of commission and omission which caused the ban, since the ban always is imposed on account of sin (which is far worse than the ban itself), and yet here as elsewhere things are perverted, so that we only consider how much the rod hurts and not why we are punished. Where can you find men to-day who are as much in fear of sinning and provoking God as they are in fear of the ban? Thus it happens that we are more in fear of the wholesome chastisement than of the heinous sins. We must let men think and act thus, because the natural man does not see the spiritual harm in sin as he feels the smarts of chastisement; although the fear of the ban has also been exaggerated by the tyrannous methods and threatenings of the spiritual judges who drive the people to fear punishment more than sin.
When, however, we are unjustly put under the ban, we should be very careful that we in no way do, omit, say or withhold that on account of which we are under the ban (unless we cannot do so without sin and without injury to our neighbor)72, but rather should we endure the ban in humility, die happily under it, if it cannot be otherwise, and not be terrified, even though we do not receive the sacrament and are buried in unconsecrated ground. The reason is this: Truth and righteousness belong to the inner, spiritual fellowship73 and may not be abandoned under penalty of falling under God's eternal ban. Therefore they dare not be surrendered for the sake of the external fellowship, which is immeasurably inferior, nor because of the ban. To receive the sacrament and to be buried in consecrated ground are of too little consequence that or their sake truth and righteousness be neglected. And that no one may think this strange I will go further and say that even he who dies under a just ban is not damned, unless indeed he did not repent of his sin or despised the ban. For sorrow and repentance make all things right, even though his body be exhumed or his ashes cast into the water74.
19. The unjust ban then is much more to be desired than either the just ban or the external fellowship. It is a very precious merit in the sight of God, and blessed is he who dies under an unjust ban. God will grant him an eternal crown for the truth's sake, on account of which he is under the ban. Then let him sing in the words of Psalm cix, "They have cursed me, but Thou hast blessed me." [Ps. 109:28] Only let us beware of despising the authorities, and humbly declare our innocence; if this does not avail, then we are free and without guilt in the sight of God. For if we are in duty bound by the commandment of Christ to agree with our adversary [Matt. 5:25]; how much more should we agree with the authority of the Christian Church, be it exercised justly or unjustly, by worthy or unworthy rulers.
An obedient child, though it does not deserve the punishment it receives from its mother, suffers no harm from the unjust chastisement, nay, by its very patience it becomes much dearer and more pleasing to the mother; how much more do we become lovable in God's sight, if at the hands of evil rulers we endure the unmerited punishment of the Church, as our spiritual mother. For the Church remains our mother because Christ remains Christ, and she is not changed into a step-mother simply because of our evil rulers. Nevertheless, the prelates and bishops and their officials should be temperate and not hastily use the ban, for many bans means nothing else than many laws and commandments, and prescribing many laws is to set many snares for poor souls. And so by numerous ill-advised bans nothing more results than great offence and an occasion or sin, by which the wrath of God is provoked, although the ban was ordained to reconcile Him. And although we are truly bound to obey them, still more are they bound to direct, change and regulate their decree and authority according to our ability and need and for our correction and salvation; for we have shown from St. Paul75 that power is given not for destruction but for edification [2 Cor. 13:10].
20. The ban should be applied not only to heretics and schismatics, but to all who are guilty of open sin, as we have shown above from St. Paul, who commands that the railer, extortioner, fornicator and drunkard be put under the ban [1 Cor. 5:11]. But in our day such sinners are let in peace, especially if they are bigwigs; and to the disgrace of this noble form of authority, the ban is used only for the collection of debts of money, often so insignificant that the costs amount to more than the original debt. In order to gloss this over they have hit upon a new device, saying they put under the ban not because of debt but because of disobedience, because the summons was not respected; were it not for debt, however, they would forget the disobedience, as we see when many other sins, even their own, escape the ban. A poor man must often be disobedient if he is cited to go so many miles, lose time and money and neglect his trade. It is utter tyranny to summon a man to come such a distance across country to court.
And I commend the temporal princes76 who will not permit
A very important limitation for Luther's position.
See Open Letter to the Nobility, below, p. 98.
Again an important limitation.
See above, p. 41.
The ashes of Hus were cast into the Rhine (1415), and the body of Wycliff was exhumed and cremated and the ashes cast into the water (1427).
See above, p. 42.
In 1518 both George and Frederick of Saxony took the position that spiritual jurisdiction should be limited to spiritual matters. Gess,
