ABSTRACT
Luther had developed his doctrine according to the Bible as he understood it and had in his creed effaced everything papist. To be a Lutheran meant to be severed from the Roman Catholic church. The governments which attached themselves to his doctrine completely rooted out the papist elements in their areas. Their people then gradually became subject to a new ecclesiastical organism. We know the laments of Luther and all Lutheran reformers about their behaviour otherwise: that the stopping of good works had brought about a total brutalization. But Luther considered his responsibility as fulfilled when the people remained removed from any papist influence; the rest he left to God – and he was not the governor of the electorate of Saxony. Next to the pulpit there come the secular authorities and not a controlling presbytery. Compulsion is confined chiefly to a person’s no longer being allowed to be a Catholic.
