For over a hundred years now there have been in the Kingdom of Bohemia Jews as well as three different [Christian] faiths,* and their kings have nevertheless maintained external peace and prevented tumult on account of religion. Also, whoever has knowledge of history since the birth of Christ must admit, I think, that usually the emperors and governments who used their sword in matters of faith had far more unrest and tumult than the others, who did not do so but rather left the teaching of faith free to each individual. Why should it not also be possible today for a government to keep peace if it is otherwise diligently alert and watchful?
But if an insurrection should occur, one should not on that account despair. One must after all expect insurrections for far more trivial causes. But the government always has this consolation, as was shown above, that it will survive and that the rebels will fall and perish. As one saw in the peasants’ rebellion, even though it occurred in many places because the governments would not tolerate the gospel. For this reason God indeed had ground to inflict a defeat upon them, as perhaps he may still do in due course. Nevertheless, he did not choose to do so by means of the rebellion of their subjects, though it seemed for a while that he did. Instead, when things looked darkest, the tables were turned, the peasants were destroyed in their destroying and the governments escaped, so to speak, without so much as a broken leg. How much more gladly, then, will God help that government which keeps to its office and leaves Christ’s kingdom unmolested. God grant that all governments may believe this. Amen. For otherwise the daily torture and execution of both true and false believers will not cease. And it is much to be feared that one day, precisely for the reason that one seeks to exterminate false belief by the sword, governments will come into conflict and whoever is the strongest will teach his doctrine to the others. Then there will be a real blood-letting, which the devil, as the signs already indicate, diligently seeks and promotes.
[Letter of the Anonymous Author to Spengler]
Dear Mr. Secretary, I would very much like to read the memorandum by... though I do not have the time to do so today. But judging from your memorandum and from the note that you wrote me today, you did not correctly understand me, or perhaps neither of us understood the other, in our recent war of words.** For it is not my opinion that a government should not have the power, in the faith to which it adheres, to conduct visitations, to appoint and dismiss preachers, and to establish ceremonies. Indeed, I say more: not only should a government have the power to do this with respect to its own faith, but so also should every group or sect in its own faith, so that Christians, Jews, Anabaptists, etc., all would be free to establish and observe without hindrance those doctrines and ceremonies which they regard as right and by which they hope to come to God, but in separate places, namely the Christians in their churches, the Anabaptists and Jews in their designated houses or synagogues.
I also say further that not only the government in its faith but also every sect—the Jews, Anabaptists, or others—should have the power to dismiss preachers or ministers whom they had appointed and subsequently found unfit for office, and to appoint others in their place, just as a government or community appoints and dismisses schoolteachers or shepherds.
* Ordinary Catholics; Hussites, known as Calixtines or Utraquists; and the Bohemian Brethren (also known as the Unity of the Brethren), an offshoot of the Hussite movement.
** A reference to the fact that the anonymous author and Spengler had had a long private discussion of their differences.
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