ours in your congregations. Those who would commune with a different faith and with a different attitude of conscience would necessarily on both sides receive something different from that which they believe
[they are receiving]. Thus it would be unavoidable that through the ministry [of the sacrament] and9 our consciences either their faith would be made a mockery through hidden deceit and lies10 if the communicants were unaware of this difference, or, if they were aware of the difference, then their faith would be destroyed through a public sacrilege. You can see how devout and Christian this would be. For this reason let us select rather the lesser of two evils, if one of the two must be endured at all. Let us therefore rather put up with this smaller disagreement, together with a limited peace, lest through our efforts to cure this evil we may stir up real tragedies of more serious discord and unbearable uproar.
I wish you would believe that, as I have told you at the Coburg,11 I want to settle our discord even though I might have to live three times to accomplish it, because I have seen how necessary your fellowship is for us, and how the gospel was and still is disadvantaged [by our discord]. I have become so much aware of this that I am convinced that all the gates of hell,12 the whole papacy, all of Turkey, the whole world, all the flesh, and whatever evils there are could not have harmed the gospel at all, if we had only been of one mind. But what am I to do with something which cannot be accomplished? If you wish to be fair, then you will attribute the fact that I shun this unity not to stubbornness, but to the urging of my conscience and to the force of my faith. Since our discussion at the Coburg I have great hope, but this hope is not yet unwavering.
May the Lord Jesus enlighten us, and may he make us perfectly of one mind; for this I pray, for this I sigh, for this I long. Farewell in the Lord.
Wittenberg, January 22, 1531 [Wittenberg,] February 15, 1531 In the alliance negotiations of the evangelicals which followed the 1529 Diet of Speyer the right of armed resistance to the emperor had been questioned.1 The Nürnberg city council categorically rejected the existence of any such right.2 In the aftermath of the Diet of Augsburg3 a meeting of the evangelicals was held during the last days of December, 1530, in Smalcald for the purpose of creating a defense alliance.
The Nürnberg delegation to this meeting was pushed into a corner by the Electoral Saxon delegation, which cited the short note Luther had written on this issue in October of 1530.4 The Saxons presented this document in such a way that Luther appeared to have changed his position on the resistance issue fundamentally, and to have endorsed wholeheartedly armed resistance to the emperor. Lazarus Spengler,
Nürnberg's chancellor,5 immediately contacted Luther through Wenceslas Link6 and asked for clarification.7 Shortly thereafter, on February 3, 1531, Spengler contacted Luther once more, this time through Veit Dietrich.8 In his reply, letter No. 239, Luther first makes clear that he is not at all aware of having changed his position on the resistance issue. He goes on to state that during a meeting at Torgau he had endorsed armed resistance to the emperor, provided that the situation were as the legal experts had then presented it to him. If indeed this were the case, then, Luther states, there would be no reason for not endorsing armed resistance to the emperor;9 since thus far the legal experts had not proven their arguments, however, Luther refuses to make any final decision on this matter.
On Lazarus Spengler, see LW 48, 184.
Text in German with portions in Latin: WA, Br 6, 36–37.10
To the excellent Mr. Lazarus Spengler, chancellor11 of the Nürnberg city council,12 my friend and brother Grace and peace. Prudent, dear Sir and Friend! Master13 Veit14 has informed me of Your Honor's concern, that Your Honor is troubled by the arguments15 of our friends who boast as if we had recanted the earlier brief16 [which stated] that one is not to resist the emperor.
I am certainly not aware of any such recantation. At Torgau,17 however, it did happen that our friends heatedly debated with us on this matter. Some of them even intended to decide and do what seemed right to them without consulting us. This we had to allow to happen.18 Since we finally insisted, however, that the legal dictum, "One may fight force with force,"19 would not be sufficient [to justify resistance to the emperor], as we had also argued20 earlier in the brief,21 etc., our friends produced the following: the