spreading Zwinglian opinions in Coburg. He regretted the toleration of the Zwinglians in Switzerland
after their defeat, which he uncharitably interpreted as a righteous judgment of God.^62
A few words on his views concerning the toleration of the Jews who had to suffer every
indignity from Christians, as if they were personally responsible for the crime of the crucifixion.
Luther was at first in advance of public opinion. In 1523 he protested against the cruel treatment
of the Jews, as if they were dogs, and not human beings, and counseled kindness and charity as the
best means of converting them. If the apostles, he says, who were Jews, had dealt with the heathen,
as we heathen Christians deal with the Jews, no heathen would ever have been converted, and I
myself, if I were a Jew, would rather become anything else than a Christian.^63 But in 1543 he wrote
two violent books against the Jews.^64 His intercourse with several Rabbis filled him with disgust
and indignation against their pride, obstinacy and blasphemies. He came to the conclusion that it
was useless to dispute with them and impossible to convert them. Moses could do nothing with
Pharaoh by warnings, plagues and miracles, but had to let him drown in the Red Sea. The Jews
would crucify their expected Messiah, if he ever should come, even worse than they crucified the
Christian Messiah. They are a blind, hard, incorrigible race.^65 He went so far as to advise their
expulsion from Christian lands, the prohibition of their books, and the burning of their synagogues
and even their houses in which they blaspheme our Saviour and the Holy Virgin. In the last of his
sermons, preached shortly before his death at Eisleben, where many Jews were allowed to trade,
he concluded with a severe warning against the Jews as dangerous public enemies who ought not
to be tolerated, but left the alternative of conversion or expulsion.^66
Melanchthon, the mildest of the Reformers, went—strange to say—a step further than
Luther, not during his lifetime, but eight years after his death, and expressly sanctioned the execution
of Servetus for blasphemy in the following astounding letter to Calvin, dated Oct. 14, 1554:
"Reverend sir and dearest brother: I have read your work in which you have lucidly refuted the
horrible blasphemies of Servetus, and I thank the Son of God, who has been the arbiter (brabeuthv")
of this your contest. The church, both now and in all generations, owes and will owe you a debt of
gratitude. I entirely assent to your judgment. (Tuo judicio prorsus adsentior.) And I say, too, that
your magistrates did right in that, after solemn trial, they put the blasphemer (hominem blasphemum)
to death."^67 He expressed here his deliberate conviction to which he adhered. Three years later, in
(^62) In a letter to Albrecht of Brandenburg, a. 1532, after he heard of Zwingli’s death. De Wette IV., 349-355. In the same letter he speaks
of Zwingli’s salvation only problematically, as having possibly occurred in the last moment! He lays there the greatest stress on the real
presence as a fundamental article of faith.
(^63) See his tract entitled Dass Jesus Christus ein geborner Jude sei, in the Erl. Frkf. ed. Bd. XIX., p. 45-75. He says that if I were a Jew
and suffered what the Jews had to suffer from popes, bishops and monks, "so wäre ich eher eine Sau worden denn ein Christ. Denn sie
haben mit den Juden gehandelt, als wären es Hunde, und nicht Menschen" (p. 47).
(^64) Von den Jüden und ihren Lügen, Wittenb., 1543, and Vom Schem Hamphoras und vom Geschlecht Christi, Wittenb., 1543. In the
Erl. Frkf. ed. Bd. XXXII., 99-274, and 275-358.
(^65) "Ein Jüde oder jüdisch Herz ist so stock-stein-eisen-teufel-hart, dass es mit keiner Weise zu bewegen ist ... Summa, es sind junge
Teufel, zur Höllen verdammt" (l.c. p. 276). He had no hope of the future conversion of the Jews, which some justly derived from Rom.
11, but "St. Paulus meinet gar viel ein Anderes" (277).
(^66) "Vermahnung wider die Jüden," 1546, Erl. ed. LXV., 186-188. He concludes: Wollen sich die Jüden zu uns bekehren und von ihrer
Lästerung und was sie uns sonst gethan haben, aufhören, so wollen wir es ihnen gerne vergeben: wo aber nicht, so sollen wir sie auch
bei uns nicht dulden noch leiden."This reminds one of the way in which Prince Bismarck in the year 1886 proposed to deal with the Poles
in Posen as enemies of Prussia and Germany: to buy them out, and expel them from the land of their birth. In several other respects, both
favorable and unfavorable, that great statesman may be called the political Luther of the nineteenth century.
(^67) Corpus Reform. Opera Mel. VIII., 362. Comp. H. Tollin, Ph. Melanchthon und M. Servet. Eine Quellen-Studie. Berlin, 1876 (198
pages). Tollin wrote several monographs on Servetus in his various relations.