62 5 ORIENTATION.
they crucified the Christian Messiah. They are a blind, hard, incorrigible race." 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.”
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 (βραβευτής) 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
2) 8
(hominem blasphemum) to death. He expressed here his
deliberate conviction to which he adhered. ‘Three years later, in
1“ Hin Jiide oder jiidisch Herz ist so stock-stein-eisen-teufel-hart, dass es mit keiner Weise zu bewegen ist. . . -. Summa, es sind junge Teufel, zur Hollen verdammt” (1. 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).
2“ Vermahnung wider die Jiiden,” 1546, Erl. ed. LX V., 186-188. He concludes: “ Wollen sich die Jiiden zu uns bekehren und von ihrer Lasterung und was sie uns sonst gethan haben, aufhéren, so wollen wir es thnen 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 iment may be called the political Luther of the nineteenth century.
8 Corpus Reform. Opera Mel. VIII., 362. Comp. H. Tollin, Ph. Melanchthon
§ 11. PROTESTANTISM AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 63
a warning against the errors of Theobald Thammer, he called the execution of Servetus “a pious and memorable example to all posterity.” ' We cannot tell what Luther might have said in this case had he lived at that time. It is good for his reputation that he was spared the trial.?
The other Lutheran Reformers agreed essentially with the leaders. They conceded to the civil ruler the control over the religious as well as political opinions of their subjects. Martin Bucer went furthest in this direction and taught in his “Dialogues ” (1535) the right and the duty of Christian magistrates to reform the church, to forbid and punish popish idolatry, and all false religions, according to the full rigor of the Mosaic law.*
In accordance with these views of the Lutheran Reformers the Roman Catholics in Lutheran countries were persecuted, not, indeed, by shedding their blood as the blood of Protestants was shed in Roman Catholic countries, but by the confiscation of their church property, the prohibition of their worship, and, if it seemed necessary, by exile. In the reorganization of the church in Electoral Saxony in 1528, under the direction of the Wittenberg Reformers, the popish priests were deprived of their benefices, and even obstinate laymen were forced to sell their property and to leave their country. “For,” said the Elector, “although it is not our intention to bind any one to what he is to believe and hold, yet will we, for the prevention of mischievous tumult and other inconveniences, suffer neither sect nor separation in our territory.” * und M. Servet. Eine Quellen-Studie. Berlin, 1876 (198 pages). Tollin wrote several monographs on Servetus in his various relations.
1 Ibid., 1X., 183: “‘ Dedit vero et Genevensis Reipubl. Magistratus ante annos quatuor punite insanabilis blasphemice adversus Filium Dei, sublato Serveto Arragone, pium et memorabile ad omnem posteritatem exemplum.”
2 Luther knew only the Servetus of 1531, and once refers to him in his Table-Talk, as a fanatic who mastered theology by false philosophy. See Tollin, Luther und Servet, Berlin, 1875 (61 pages).
8 See Tollin, Butzer’s Confutatio der Libri VII. De Trinitatis Erroribus, in the ‘‘ Studien und Kritiken’’ for 1875; and Michael Servet und Martin Butzer, Berlin, 1880; Baum, Capito und Butzer (1860), pp. 489 sq., 478, and
495 sq.; also Janssen, Gesch. des deutschen Volkes, vol. III., 194. 4“ Denn wiewohl unsere Meinung nicht ist, jemand zu verbinden, was er glauben