# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1864_S271
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lic. Ströbel's Account of the Lutheran Doctrine of Civil Authority, as Opposed to the Calvinist. 271

free imperial cities, but rather an almost wholly unrestricted hereditary monarchy; a "subordinate authority" did indeed exist there too, as in all other lands, but it comprised merely royal servants and state officials, and Hugo Grotius rightly said of it that "subordinate authority owes its very existence to the higher authority alone, and, in relation to it, consists of nothing but private persons." To these French "subordinate authorities," which toward their king were nothing more than subjects and private individuals, Beza and his kindred spirits transfer, in bad faith (mala fide)—as one can well sense from their own statements—what Luther allowed to hold true of the German territorial-princely and free-imperial-city "subordinate authority." That is downright seditious: the arming of subjects against their civil authority; and everything the Calvinists adduce for their theory comes down to sophistries, whose justification was thrust, underhandedly, onto the conscience of the German Reformation and its genuine champions, the Magdeburgers. To roll onto the Evangelicals the moral responsibility for the rebellious ideas of Calvinism, the "as important as it is mysterious Magdeburg tract" was likewise forged. "Under this abbreviated name French historians and publicists understand a tract allegedly published in the year 1550—that is, when Magdeburg had already been under the ban for three years"—whose complete title, together with a detailed summary of its contents and a critical examination, Herr v. P. supplies (pp. 87–104, and Appendix 2, pp. 420–423), inclining to accept its authenticity despite the execution of Mary Stuart mentioned in it, despite Placcius's statement that it was "first published by the Magdeburgers in 1578," and finally despite the date and title-note of the Magdeburg edition actually before him ("De jure Magistratuum," etc., translated from the French into Latin. Magdeburg, printed by Ambrosius Kirchner. 1604.). Remarkable is his concluding statement: "Whether the Magdeburg tract is the one which we have before us (even if in a later edition), or whether it has been entirely lost, or, finally, never existed at all, cannot unsettle me or shake my conviction that the political views contained in this tract were those of the Magdeburgers at the time of the Interim—that is, of the Lutherans who rescued the German Reformation from sinking into Philippism—that in these views they extended a hand to the Calvinists whom they hated, actually going ahead of them" etc. (p. 423.) My conclusion is exactly the opposite: because the political views of the Calvinists were not to be found in the genuine writings of the faithful Lutherans, especially the Magdeburgers, though eagerly sought there, it was thought good to foist that libel upon them. The true author is sufficiently indicated already by the remark: "Beza's tract De jure magistratuum at first aroused in me some misgiving, on account of the identity of this title with that of the Magdeburg tract." Composed by Beza,