The poison of worldly wisdom is best revealed in that it leaves people wounded and turned away from God, hateful and scheming how to rise up against truth. They whose veins are filled with the earthly poison consider truth their worst enemy… Yes, when the Emperor joined Christian faith with pagan lordship, he has planted a seed that grew and bore multitudes of transgressors, who prospered and produced such a terrible number of evils that not even the devil himself could invent them all. All these wicked and pious hordes, coated with a veneer of specious holiness have so discredited faith that very few are willing to follow it. They turned the rest of the crowd to paganism.
Only what has been planted can sprout and grow. The Emperor has been planted with his authority into the Christian soil. He grew strongly and, having grown, blossomed and produced seed that, planted, multiplied and spread paganism everywhere with its authority, laws, and administration. For, it being in the nature of paganism to deny all faith and all the gospel of Christ, and to ridicule it, authority is of necessity driven back to check it cruelly, while it prospers on arrogant pride, and on godless villainy without comparison. Authority is necessarily driven to check it (the Gospel) cruelly, to torture, to tear, to plunder, to imprison … and all this in order to tame the uncircumcised mind of the evil-doers and to put them in their proper place.
This course is not the way of faith and salvation; it is good only for the taming of unjust people in their physical lives and temporal goods and for preventing their fall and end on account of their excessive stupidity and temper.
CHAPTER 23
THE EMPEROR’S GUILT (CONCLUSION)
The third feature with which the Emperor has defiled the faith of the followers of Christ … (consists in the fact) that he uses pagan power arbitrarily and willfully, with plenty of haughtiness and arrogance, paying no heed to the circumstance that he is a Christian and that he uses authority over Christians who were redeemed by the blood of Christ and who are, therefore, servants subject to the authority of the highest Lord of lords; the Emperor himself wants to rule over them, to dictate to them, and to administer them. O, the arrogant pride of the emperors, kings, and other lords! If they would ever remember (that they are Christians) they should never dare rule over people so willfully, just to suit their whims. They would respect and stand in awe before the Lord of this people… They would know that if they rule willfully in whatever manner over the people, against the Highest Lord, they and their rule would fall under His judgment…
I am not too much concerned about the corporeal wrongdoings that they inflict upon the people, such as the collecting of taxes and the imposition of week work and boon work. These corporeal servitudes are the cause of impoverishment and of a fatiguing burden on their serfdom; still, if the people endured them in humility, these (impositions) would not harm their consciences.
However, a much greater concern should be given to the fact that this power and system is so vicious and devoid of good when judged from the point of view of faith. In this matter the lords want to do nothing regarding their consciences or the consciences of those over whom they rule. They are all Christian and at least some of them have, on account of faith, a bad conscience when they kill, do violence to others, and rob them of their property. But (on the whole) they do not hold these things to be sinful. Driven by pride they fight for goods and chattels, for worldly honor, and if someone touches their property, immediately they declare war, round up the people like cattle, and drive them to war where
