15 8
ESSAYS ON LIBERTY
it the office of the civil po\ver to prevent abomina.. tions. I He provided no security that, in discharging this duty, the sovereign should be guided by the advice of orthodox divines; 2 but he held the duty itself to be imperative. In obedience to the fundamental principle, that the Bible is the sole guide in all things, he defined the office and justified it by scriptural precedents. The Mosaic code, he argued, awarded to false prophets the punishment of death, and the majesty of God is not to be less deeply reverenced or less rigorously vindicated under the New Testament than under the Old; in a more perfect revelation the obligation is stronger. Those who will not hear the Church must be excluded from the communion; but the civil power is to intervene when the ecclesiastical excommunication has been pronounced, and men must be compelled to come in. For, according to the more accurate definition of the Church \vhich is given in the Confession of Schmalkald, and in the Apology of the Confession of Augsburg, excommunication involves damnation. There is no salvation to be hoped for out of the Church, and the test of orthodoxy against the Pope, the devil, and all the \vorld, is the dogma of justification by faith. s The defence of religion became, on this theory, not only the duty of the civil power, but the object of its institution. I ts business was solely the coercion of those who were out of the Church. The faithful could not be the objects of its action; they did of their o\vn accord more than any laws required. " A good tree," says Luther, (C brings forth good fruit by nature, without compulsion; is it not madness to prescribe laws to an apple-tree that it shall bear apples and not thorns? " 4 This view naturally proceeded from the axiom of the certainty of the salvation 1 (( Principes nostri non cogunt ad fidem et Evangelion, sed cohibent externas abominationes" (De Wette, iii. 50), II Wenn die weltliche Obrigkeit die Ver- brechen wider die zweite Gesetzestafel bestrafen, und aus der menschlichen Gesellschaft tilgen solle, wie vielmehr denn die Verbrechen wider die erste?" (Luther, apud Bucholtz, Geschichte Ferdinands /" iii, 571). 2 Planck, iv, 61, explains why this was not thought of. 8 Linde, Staatskirche, p. 23- ' ( Der Papst sammt seinem Haufen glaubt nicht ; darum bekennen wir, er werde nicht selig, das ist verdammt werden" (Table- Talk, ii. 350). .i Kaltenborn, Vorliiufer des Grotius, 208,
