Note 2304 — Chapter XXXV · (continued 2)

The vacillation which characterised Luther’s attitude towards the State-Church system and which came from his early ideas concerning the true Christians who had no need of any authority over them, has recently been set forth as follows by the Protestant lawyer and historian Gustav v. Schulthess-Rechberg: “Luther’s true Christians were Utopian persons and hence his Church was the same. In his idealistic confidence in God he had expected too much from them. And thus there came for his Reformation an era of hesitancy and groping, which refused for a while to make way for more stable conditions. The Church which Luther had characterised as a necessary expedient for furthering the kingdom of God on earth now itself needed to be assisted and supported from without, if it was to suffice for its task. To achieve this we find Luther leaving no means untried. But his schemes were not very satisfactory. He put a patch here and another one there, appealed to the princes and then to the peasants, seeking to curry favour of one and the other simply for the sake of some small concession and in order to interest them in his Church.... At last Luther thought he had found a remedy: this was that the Church should seek support in the secular power. When quite at the end of his resources he had begun to remind the princes of their duties as rulers. From mere occasional allusions he soon passed on to energetic admonitions addressed to the ‘great ones,’ accompanied by his customary threats and abuse. It had indeed gone against the grain to summon the authorities to carry out his wishes, hence, at every opportunity, he insists on his independence of them.... Luther had in the event to submit to reproaches which he could not always honestly shift on to the shoulders of the ‘false priestlings and factious spirits.’”