In his exposition of the First Epistle of St. Peter, from the same year (1523), he thuscomments on the exhortation "to fear God and honor the king:"^720
"If the civil magistrate interferes with spiritual matters of conscience in which God
alone must rule, we ought not to obey at all, but rather lose our head. Civil government is
confined to external and temporal affairs. ... If an emperor or prince asks me about my
faith, I would give answer, not because of his command, but because of my duty to confess
my faith before everybody. But if he should go further, and command me to believe this
or that, I would say, ’Dear sir, mind your secular business; you have no right to interfere
with God’s reign, and therefore I shall not obey you at all.’ "
Similar views on the separation of church and state were held by Anabaptists, Mennonites,
the English martyr-bishop Hooper, and Robert Browne the Independent; but they had no practical
effect till a much later period.^721
Luther himself changed his opinion on this subject, and was in some measure driven to a
change by the disturbances and heresies which sprang up around him, and threatened disorder and
anarchy. The victory over the peasants greatly increased the power of the princes. The Lutheran
Reformers banded the work of re-organization largely over to them, and thus unwittingly introduced
a caesaropapacy; that is, such a union of church and state as makes the head of the state also the
supreme ruler in the church. It is just the opposite of the hierarchical principle of the Roman Church,
which tries to rule the state. Melanchthon justified this transfer chiefly by the neglect of the pope
and bishops to do their duty. He says, if Christ and the apostles had waited till Annas and Caiaphas
permitted the gospel, they would have waited in vain.^722
The co-operation of the princes and magistrates in the cities secured the establishment of
the Protestant Church, but brought it under the bondage of lawyers and politicians who, with some
honorable exceptions, knew less and ruled worse than the bishops. The Reformers often and bitterly
complained in their later writings of the rapacity of princes and nobles who confiscated the property
of churches and convents, and applied it to their own use instead of schools and benevolent purposes.
Romish historians make the most of this fact to the disparagement of the Reformation. But the
spoliations of Protestant princes are very trifling, as compared with the wholesale confiscation of
church property by Roman-Catholic powers, as France, Spain, and Italy in the last and present
centuries.
The union of church and state accounts for the persecution of papists, heretics, and Jews;
and all the Reformers justified persecution to the extent of deposition and exile, some even to the
extent of death, as in the case of Servetus.^723
The modern progress of the principle of toleration and religious liberty goes hand in hand
with the loosening of the bond of union between church and state.
§ 88. Church Visitation in Saxony.(^720) In the Erl. ed., vol. LI. p. 419 sq.
(^721) See § 12, p. 76, note.
(^722) Judicium de jure reformandi (1525), in the "Corp. Reform." I. 763 sqq.
(^723) See § 12, p. 59 sqq.